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Nathaniel Hawthorne 
At the age of thirty-six. From the oil paint¬ 
ing by Charles Osgood, 1840. Courtesy of the 
Essex Institute. 












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HAWTHORNE’S 

THE HOUSE 

OF THE 

SEVEN GABLES 


EDITED BY 

WARD lUA.REEN 

DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH, TULSA PUBLIC SCHOOLS 
VICE-PRINCIPAL, CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL 
TULSA, OKLAHOMA 



D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK CHICAGO 

SAN FRANCISCO DALLAS 

LONDON 


BOSTON 

ATLANTA 


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Copyright, 1931 

. 

D. C. Heath and Company 


No part oj the material covered by this 
copyright may be reproduced in any form 
without written permission of the publisher. 


3 E i 



Printed in the United States of America 


©CIA 


39310 

JUL * 


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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction .v 

Author's Preface .li 

CHAPTER 

I. The Old Pyncheon Family . . 1 

II. The Little Shop-Window ... 29 

III. The First Customer.42 

IV. A Day behind the Counter ... 57 

V. May and November.72 

VI. Maule’s Well.89 

VII. The Guest.101 

VIII. The Pyncheon of To-Day . . .119 

IX. Clifford and Phcebe.137 

X. The Pyncheon Garden .... 150 

XI. The Arched Window.164 

XII. The Daguerreotypist.179 

XIII. Alice Pyncheon.194 

XIV. Phcebe’s Good-By.219 

XV. The Scowl and Smile . . . . .231 

XVI. Clifford’s Chamber.248 

XVII. The Flight of Two Owls . . . .261 

XVIII. Governor Pyncheon.276 

XIX. Alice’s Posies.293 

XX. The Flower of Eden.310 

XXI. The Departure.320 

Appendix ....... 333 






ILLUSTRATIONS 


Portrait of Hawthorne .... Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Hawthorne’s Birthplace .xxi 

The Grimshaw House .xxiv 

The Custom House—Salem .xxvi 

The Old Manse .xxix 

The House of the Seven Gables . . . liv 

Miss Hepzibah’s Shop.28 







INTRODUCTION 

The Salem Witchcraft Tragedy 

Can you imagine living near the shore of the mighty ocean 
on the one hand and at the edge of a vast primeval forest 
on the other, and never knowing why the tide rises and falls; 
what causes the angry blast of the storm; what force is 
behind the lightning flash and the ominous thunder, or why 
the lightning sometimes strikes and shatters a mighty tree 
of the forest, or, perhaps, the steeple of a meetinghouse? 
If you can imagine this, you can possibly understand the 
limited mental horizon of seventeenth century people to 
whom the subject of science, then in its infancy, was a closed 
book. At that time even Cotton Mather, the colonial 
minister, one of the best known and most intelligent men 
of his day, preached to his congregation that the lightning 
strikes church steeples more frequently than it does other 
objects because Satan, the agent of lightning, detests the 
place from which emanates the word of God. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that such ignorance resulted 
in dangerous superstitions, one of the most dreadful of which 
was the belief in witchcraft. Kings, queens, bishops, priests, 
physicians, philosophers, lawmakers, scholars—all believed 
in this black art. The most eminent philosopher of the 
seventeenth century, Sir Francis Bacon, was a believer; the 
most eminent justice of the judicial courts of England, Sir 
Matthew Hale, tried and pronounced judgment upon per- 


v 


VI 


INTRODUCTION 


sons accused of witchcraft. It was recognized in the law of 
the land and in the faith of the church. From such super¬ 
stition as this Hawthorne years later drew much of his 
material for The House of the Seven Gables. 

Witchcraft, according to its believers, was the practice of 
casting an evil, distressing influence over another person to 
his mental and bodily harm. It might reach all stages from 
mere discomfort to death, itself. It was conceived to be the 
result of a compact between a human being and Satan, 
wherein the human being transferred from God to Satan 
his allegiance and worship. Satan was universally looked 
upon as the prince of the power of the air; the being who 
had control of all the evil and destructive forces of nature; 
he was the arch-enemy of God, and through the aid of man¬ 
kind his position was greatly strengthened. All who yielded 
allegiance he rewarded by exercising supernatural powers in 
their favor. The woman who allied herself with Satan was 
called a witch; a man who did so sometimes was called a 
wizard. More frequently, however, the term witch was 
applied both to men and to women, and the practice of 
their evil arts became known universally as witchcraft. 

In colonial days the greatest crusader against witchcraft 
was Cotton Mather. Seeking to make himself the greatest 
church leader in America, he mistakenly thought that the 
route to this end lay through an agitation against witch¬ 
craft and the persecution of witches. By his numerous 
publications he spread throughout New and Old England 
as many tales of witchcraft as he could collect. Repeatedly 
he tried to stir up sentiment about the matter in Boston, 
both before and after the Salem witchcraft episode. 

As a result of Mather’s activities in America and the 
accomplishments of Matthew Hopkins, the Witch-finder 
General in England, who between 1645 and 1647 brought 
at least two hundred to the gallows, many persons to-day 


INTRODUCTION 


vii 

have come to believe that the stern, religious fervor of the 
Puritans was the chief cause of the persecutions. It should 
be remembered, however, that in those early days witch¬ 
craft persecutions not infrequently attended periods of 
political or religious struggles, and that the Salem trouble 
may to a considerable degree be laid to ill feelings that 
arose from boundary disputes and from vexations over dis¬ 
agreements in the choice of a minister. It was not necessarily 
the result of any inherent characteristic of the Puritan 
religion. 

The ' Salem witchcraft persecution is important not so 
much for the number of individuals involved as for the 
subsequent penitent attitude of the judges and the mem¬ 
bers of the jury. Only twenty persons suffered death and 
two are known to have died in jail in the Salem tragedy, 
while at least two hundred were executed in England be¬ 
tween 1645 and 1647. It has been conservatively estimated 
that on the continent of Europe nearly half a million per¬ 
sons in the four centuries following the year 1300 were 
executed or burned for the crime of witchcraft. The number 
of Salem victims is, therefore, insignificant in comparison. 

The world-wide attention given to the episode was a 
result rather of the incidents which followed. In Salem, 
after the dismissal of the court, public confessions of error 
were made by members of the jury, one of the justices, and 
Ann Putnam, leader of the bewitched children. The jury 
members pleaded that they had only followed judicial in¬ 
struction, were sorry for what they had done, and wished 
to make public acknowledgment of their repentance. An 
associate justice, Captain Samuel Sewall, stood before the 
congregation of the Old South Church in Boston and con¬ 
fessed his error in judgment in condemning the accused 
persons to death for witchcraft. Annually thereafter, as 
long as he lived, on the anniversary of this confession he 


INTRODUCTION 


% 

viii 

stood before the congregation while the confession was read 
and prayers were offered for his forgiveness. In 1706 Ann 
Putnam gave her confession to the congregation of the 
Salem Village church. Late as it was, it was effective in 
revealing that the bewitched children were not under a 
spell at all but were acting merely in a wilful spirit of 
caprice. 

Powerful arguments these were in the hands of certain 
persons who, about the dawn of the eighteenth century, 
began energetically to discredit the validity of witchcraft. 
No witchcraft cases ever again came up for trial in New 
England, although in Old England there were a few trials 
nearly every year from 1694 to 1707. No one was condemned, 
however, until 1712, when Jane Wenham was sentenced to 
death for witchcraft. The superstition now stood in such 
ill-favor that she was presently pardoned, and hers was 
the last trial for witchcraft held in England. Thereafter, 
only isolated cases occurred on the continent of Europe. 

The account of the Salem witchcraft tragedy which fol¬ 
lows represents an important source of material for Haw¬ 
thorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. The details pre¬ 
sented have been chosen to acquaint the reader with (1) 
the place of the events, (2) the character of the people, 
(3) the chief causes of the trouble, (4) the manner in which 
the witchcraft delusion burst forth, (5) the striking incidents 
in the trials and executions, and (6) the general after effects. 
In other words, the details selected are those which appear 
best to reflect the facts from which Hawthorne created his 
romantic tale. 


Place of the Events 

The locality in which occurred the events of New England 
history known as the Salem witchcraft tragedy may easily 


» 


INTRODUCTION 


IX 


be outlined on a map of Massachusetts by tracing a line 
from Peabody through Beverly to Topsfield, from Tops- 
field through Boxford (or Rowley) to Andover, from Andover 
through Wilmington Junction to Reading, and from Reading 
through Lynnfield to Peabody. The territory within this 
boundary line was known in colonial times as Salem Village. 
Here occurred the preliminary events of the tragedy: the 
quarrels and dissensions, the antics of the bewitched children, 
the accusations, the arrests and examinations before the 
magistrates, and the commitments to prison to await trial. 

A short distance to the east lies Salem, where the trials 
were held before the chief judicial court of the Massachusetts 
Bay Colony. Just outside of Salem, and to the left of the 
highway leading to Boston, twenty miles away, is the 
hill on which the condemned persons were hanged. Called 
Gallows Hill in colonial times, it is now known as Gallows 
Hill Park. In Boston were the homes of the chief justice, 
Sir William Stoughton, Lieutenant Governor of the Colony, 
and the majority of the associate justices who made up the 
judicial court. The accused were kept in the prisons of 
both Salem and Boston. 

Character of the People 

The men and women who settled Salem Village were 
people of intelligence. Their morals, manners, and personal 
bearing were excellent. They were enterprising and capable 
folk who, by their energy and resourcefulness, in a remarkably 
short time, cleared off the virgin forests, prepared the land 
for farming, and erected suitable homes. When they had 
done this, rather than be put to the inconvenience and 
necessary irregularity of attending church in Salem, they 
petitioned the authorities for permission to build a meeting¬ 
house and establish a minister among themselves. 


X 


INTRODUCTION 


They were socially inclined and mutually helpful. When 
the timbers for a new house were cut, the whole community 
gathered and erected the building. When the corn was ready 
for harvesting, they came together for a husking bee and 
left the cribs full of golden ears. In the winter evenings 
they visited from house to house, where, around the fire¬ 
place, they shelled corn, cracked nuts, and made birch- 
bark brooms enough to last a year. When the arduous 
duties were done, they played games of blind-man’s buff 
and shovel board, and it is rumored that the sons and 
daughters of these Puritan fathers sometimes danced. On 
Sundays between the morning and afternoon services they 
enjoyed their noonday meal and discussed the news of the 
neighborhood. 

In addition to these pleasures there were sled rides over 
the winter snow (for there were no sleighs) and horseback 
rides in warmer seasons. The plentiful wild animal life 
afforded excellent hunting the year round. Trapping was 
a favorite sport, and the boys became expert in constructing 
snares for rabbits. Sometimes on winter evenings the men 
would sally forth to find a hollow log in the forest. In one 
end of the log they would place a musket, and in the other 
end a chunk of meat. The meat and.the trigger of the 
musket were connected with a string in such a manner that 
a tug at the meat would discharge the musket, which was 
aimed to strike just above the bait. This done, the men 
gathered at a neighboring farmhouse to await the discharge 
of the musket. Invariably they found old bruin shot through 
the head. 

But there were hardships aplenty. The Puritans lived 
in constant fear of the Indians. Near the meetinghouse 
was a training field for military tactics. Captain, Lieuten¬ 
ant, and Colonel are common titles attached to Puritan 
names. Men carried muskets on their shoulders and wore 



INTRODUCTION 


xi 


swords at their sides as commonly as they wore their clothes. 
On the bodies and faces of practically all of them were the 
scars of battle. Taxes were burdensome. The home gov¬ 
ernment demanded that the colonists pay their share of the 
war expenditures. Every colonist was required by law to 
pay his allotted amount for the support of the church. 
The very existence of the Colony was threatened either by 
an attack from the Indians or by a change, which was not 
infrequent, in the attitude of royal favor. 

Chief Causes of the Trouble 

The strain of government affairs was greatly aggravated 
by bitterness and animosities which grew up among in¬ 
habitants of Salem Village and between Salem Village and 
neighboring villages because of land disputes. It was not 
an easy matter in that primeval forest either to make ac¬ 
curate surveys or to leave permanent boundary markers. 
The General Court at Boston, in granting land to original 
settlers and in setting boundary lines of villages, made mis¬ 
takes which resulted in overlapping boundaries. The set¬ 
tlers were thus the victims of circumstances over which 
they had no control. They were aggressive in character, 
however, and stood steadfastly for their rights, which they 
had won by hard toil. The result was ill feeling and all 
but open warfare. 

One of these boundary disputes reveals another charac¬ 
teristic of the Puritans—their pride of ancestry, or emphasis 
upon personal, material worth. Fate set the stage to in¬ 
volve a wealthy governor’s son in a boundary squabble with 
a poor artisan. The artisan was one Francis Nurse, a skilful 
tray-maker and industrious small farmer; the gentleman 
was Zerubabbel Endicott, younger son of Governor John 
Endicott. The dignity of Zerubabbel’s social position was 


XI1 


INTRODUCTION 


greatly increased by the fact that his wife’s father was the 
governor of Connecticut and her grandfather none other 
than John Winthrop, first governor of the Colony. A fact 
which greatly added to the neighborhood feeling against the 
artisan was that the land he possessed had originally be¬ 
longed to Zerubabbel’s elder brother, John Endicott, junior. 
John had died without an heir to inherit the land; his wife 
had married a wealthy man of Boston, who, already possessed 
of sufficient land, sought to dispose of this particular estate 
upon the death of his Endicott wife. 

He offered the farm to Francis Nurse on easy terms that 
amounted to little more than rent. In the course of the 
transaction the inevitable question of the boundary line 
arose. The wealthy Boston man defended the title in behalf 
of his artisan tenant, with the result that the court decision 
deprived Zerubabbel Endicott of a considerable portion of 
his farm and gave it into the possession of the artisan. This 
disagreeable circumstance the inhabitants of Salem Village 
neither forgave nor forgot. They never recognized Francis 
Nurse as the owner of the land and looked upon his posses¬ 
sion of it with an envy and dislike which cost the poor 
artisan the life of his wife when the witchcraft craze burst 
forth among them. 

This and other boundary disputes made it impossible for 
the inhabitants of Salem Village to settle upon a unanimous 
choice of a minister. James Bayley, George Burroughs, and 
Deodat Lawson were three ministers who in turn struggled 
unsuccessfully to bring unity to the distracted parish. Each 
came in hope and, after a period of years, left in discourage¬ 
ment because of nonsupport from the opposing factions. 
It was an evil day for the people of Salem Village when 
Samuel Parris, the fourth minister, appeared among them. 
His predecessors had been honest, devout, and sincere, but 
he was crafty and commercially minded. He had studied for 


INTRODUCTION 


xm 


the ministry at Harvard College, but left the institution 
without being graduated. For some time he plied the trade 
of merchant in the West Indies, but finally decided upon 
the ministry and moved to Salem. 

The people of the village, tired of personal strife, had 
earnestly laid aside their hatreds and resolved to come to¬ 
gether in peace, but the designing schemes of Samuel Parris 
soon stirred them to still greater bitterness. Distrustful and 
angry in their attitude toward each other, the opposing 
factions united in a desire to rid themselves of their minister, 
a matter of serious difficulty if the minister, as in this in¬ 
stance, wished to remain. They were, however, on the eve 
of success when a fearsome circumstance intervened which 
placed a terrible power in the hands of the minister and 
filled the parish with despair and dread. 

Outbreak of the Witchcraft Trouble 

This event occurred in the winter of 1691-1692, three years 
after Samuel Parris came to Salem Village and two years 
after he was ordained minister of the Salem Village church. 
Besides his daughter, Elizabeth, aged nine, and his niece, 
Abigail Williams, aged eleven, he had in his household two 
West Indian servants, Tituba and her husband, John. Near¬ 
by lived Ann Putnam, twelve years old, the daughter of 
Sergeant Thomas Putnam, clerk of the parish church. In 
the fall of 1691 Ann and several older girls had formed a 
habit of spending their evenings at the Parris home with 
Elizabeth and Abigail, and here the group listened avidly 
to the weird tales told by Tituba. Presently they began 
practicing the tricks the native woman had taught them 
and were enthralled by what they believed to be their 
supernatural powers. 

By January, 1692, these girls had so steeped themselves 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


in the lore of black art and the magic of the West Indies 
that it became their diversion during practically all their 
waking hours, just as spinning tops or playing marbles be¬ 
comes the sole occupation of boys at different seasons. They 
began uttering strange sounds from grotesque positions 
under tables and in chimney corners. They threw their 
bodies into painful contortions; they stared at invisible 
objects; their voices told of horrible torments. 

“What ails the children ?” the parents asked, first in annoy¬ 
ance, then in wonder, and finally in real alarm. They con¬ 
sulted each other. The minister called upon Dr. Griggs, 
the newly arrived physician, who was an uncle of one of 
the prankish girls, Elizabeth Hubbard. The doctor observed 
their bodily and mental torment, and announced gravely 
that they were bewitched. Ministers from Salem, Beverly, 
and Boston were called in consultation. They agreed with 
the diagnosis of the physician. A panic followed. To the 
people of Salem Village, the verdict of witchcraft announced 
by the ministers was worse than a death sentence. To their 
distracted minds it seemed to sound the death knell to their 
religion, and perhaps to the Colony. 

It had come to be the general belief among churchmen 
that the Devil would take hisjast stand in America, whither 
the church had fled to free itself from the bondage of dogma 
and superstition which bound the church in Europe. The 
Indian religion was the worship of spirits, and, hence, 
the Indians were looked upon as the particular agents of the 
Devil. To the Salem Village people, living in constant dread 
of being destroyed by the Indians, dwelling in fearful isola¬ 
tion, deprived of their charter by royal mandate, oppressed 
with taxes, aggravated to bitterness by disputes over prop¬ 
erty, this sudden and awful announcement of Witchcraft 
was in effect a message that the Devil himself was let loose 
among them. 


INTRODUCTION 


xv 


Striking Incidents and After Effects 

The tragic scenes which followed occupied the whole time 
and thought of the people of Salem Village and of the entire 
colony from January, 1692, when the bewitched children were 
discovered, until the climax of the proceedings in Septem¬ 
ber, 1692, when the last victims were executed. 

The Reverend Nicholas Noyes, of Salem, seems to have 
made it his particular business to attempt to persuade the 
victims to confess their guilt. When Sarah Good, the second 
of those to be condemned to death, came up for execution on 
July 19, the Reverend Noyes was present and urged her 
to confess, saying: 

“You are a witch; I know you are a witch.” 

“You are a liar,” said she. “I am no more a witch 
than you are a wizard; and if you take away my life, 
God will give you blood to drink.” 

There was a tradition among the people of Salem that 
the manner of Noyes’s death strangely verified the predic¬ 
tion thus - wrung from the desperate woman. He was an 
exceedingly corpulent man, with high blood pressure, and 
he died of an internal hemorrhage, bleeding profusely at 
the mouth. In the opening pages of The House of the Seven 
Gables it will be seen that Hawthorne used this tradition, 
adapted to the circumstances of the story. 

John Putnam, brother of Sergeant Thomas Putnam, 
father of Ann, who had led the bewitched children, was par¬ 
ticularly bitter against George Burroughs, second minister 
of the parish. At John’s instigation, Burroughs, who was 
at that time in charge of a pioneer parish in Maine, was 
ferreted out, arrested, and brought back to Salem. There, 
after a brief trial, he was executed on the charge of witchcraft. 

One of the peculiarities of all the trials was that every one 


XVI 


INTRODUCTION 


of the accused who agreed to confess to the crime of witch¬ 
craft was pardoned. According to the Puritan point of 
view a confession of guilt indicated repentance of the crime 
and, therefore, hope for the redemption of the accused. 
This meant that all who were willing to belie themselves 
would be saved, and the records reveal that fifty-five of the 
accused did so confess. Of the twenty who suffered death 
and the two others who died in prison, all without exception 
preferred death to the confession of the guilt which was 
not theirs. 

The heavy expenses of the trials and imprisonments and 
the large number of inhabitants whose property was con¬ 
fiscated by the state upon their condemnation for the crime 
of witchcraft, combined to destroy the prosperity of the 
village. More pitiful than this was the blight which .befell 
the consciences of the accusers and the prosecutors, many 
of whom moved to other parts, remote from the scene. The 
Salem Village meetinghouse, wherein the tragedy originated, 
was allowed to crumble and decay because of public senti¬ 
ment, and later a new meetinghouse was erected, wherein 
the beginnings of a better day might be initiated. 

People of high-mindedness and courage continued to ex¬ 
press much doubt concerning the- genuineness of the be¬ 
witched children. Because of the aloofness of Increase 
Mather, father of Cotton Mather, and president of Harvard 
University, the children accused a member of his family. 
The wife of Sir William Phips, the governor, sympathized 
with those who suffered prosecution. It was said that she 
had written an order for the release of a prisoner from jail. 
Presently, she was accused. Then, because Jonathan Cor¬ 
win, one of the magistrates identified with the proceedings 
from the beginning, remained a passive rather than an 
active participant throughout, the children repeatedly “cried 
out against” his mother. What finally broke the spell that 


INTRODUCTION 


XVII 


held the minds of the whole colony in bondage was the ac¬ 
cusation in October, 1692, of Mrs. Hale, wife of the minister 
of the first church in Beverly. Her genuine and distinguished 
virtues had won for her a reputation and secured in the 
hearts of the people a confidence which superstition could 
not shake. The whole community became convinced that 
the accusers in crying out upon Mrs. Hale had perjured 
themselves. From that moment on their power was de¬ 
stroyed. 

It was not until May, 1693, however, that legal proceed¬ 
ings were closed by order of Governor Phips, and one hun¬ 
dred fifty persons found guilty in the trials were released 
from prison. The effect of the tragedy, nevertheless, con¬ 
tinued to concern the people of the colony beyond the middle 
of the eighteenth century. In fact, efforts to make proper 
amends and adjustments of losses and injuries sustained 
were finally given up only because of the disturbances inci¬ 
dent to the cause of the American Revolution. 

The evil Samuel Parris held on to his position stubbornly, 
but, finally, in 1697, he was ejected, and Joseph Green came 
to minister to the broken flock. For twenty years, until 
his death in 1717, Green labored among them and lived to 
see the families of the prosecutors sitting in worship in the 
same pew with the families of those who had been executed. 
Ann Putnam yielded to his ministrations eventually, confessed 
her guilt, and, through his efforts, was forgiven by and re¬ 
ceived into church worship with the survivors of families 
whose members had been executed because of her accusations. 

This, then, represents the material which Hawthorne had 
at hand and from which he was able to construct the back¬ 
ground for The House of the Seven Gables. For years he 
was a resident of the town in which the tragedy had oc¬ 
curred, and he had become steeped in the lore of witch¬ 
craft days. We are now ready to consider the man himself. 


xviii INTRODUCTION 

Facts About the Author 
I. ANCESTRY 

In 1630, when eight hundred Puritans under the leader¬ 
ship of John Winthrop arrived to increase the settlement 
of Salem and to establish other settlements, notably Boston, 
one William Hathorne (1607-1681) of Wiltshire, England, 
was among that large company. He first settled in Dor¬ 
chester, but, upon being offered a grant of land in Salem, 
he removed thither, his name first appearing on the Salem 
church records in 1636. His estate is identified on the map 
by the village of Hathorne, which appears within the 
boundary lines of Salem Village. 

No one in the annals of the colony fills a larger place 
than does William Hathorne. He was a soldier, a counsel, 
a judge, and he served in innumerable other positions re¬ 
quiring talent and intelligence. Distinguished as a public 
speaker, he was assistant in the upper branch of the legis¬ 
lature for seventeen years, served as deputy for twenty 
years, and became first speaker of the House of Representa¬ 
tives in 1644. His granddaughter, Elizabeth Porter, married 
Joseph Putnam and became the mother of Israel Putnam of 
Revolutionary fame. 

John Hathorne (1640-1717) succeeded his father in all 
of the latter’s public honors. As magistrate of Salem Vil¬ 
lage, he was the judge, in copartnership with Jonathan 
Corwin of Salem, before whom the examinations of those 
accused of witchcraft were held. Among those whom he 
committed to prison was Rebecca Nurse, who was con¬ 
demned to death when she later appeared for trial before 
the Special Judicial Court appointed by the governor. 
Julian Hawthorne (1846-19—), son of Nathaniel, the author, 
is authority for the statement that Rebecca Nurse invoked 


a heavy curse upon him and upon his children’s children; 
and further says: 

He was a narrower man than his father, but probably 
a more punctiliously righteous person, according to the 
Puritan code of morality. He ended a poorer man than 
he began, the witch’s curse having taken effect on the 
worlcjly prosperity of the family. The site of the present 
town of Raymond, in Maine, once belonged to the Ha- 
thornes; but the title-deeds were in some unaccountable 
way lost, and were not recovered until the lapse of time 
had rendered the claim obsolete. 

It is interesting to note that Hawthorne used this incident 
in full in The House of the Seven Gables. 

Joseph Hathorne (1691-1768), who spent his entire life 
in the peaceful pursuit of farming, was known as Farmer 
Joseph. His quiet life is the more striking in contrast with 
the life of his son Daniel (1731-?), who made a name for 
himself in the war of the Revolution as commander of the 
privateer, Fair America. To celebrate his bravery one of 
his crew wrote a ballad of him, entitled “Bold Daniel.” His 
son, Nathaniel (1775-1808), was also a seafaring man, a 
captain in the merchant marine, who met an untimely death 
from yellow fever in Surinam (Dutch Guiana) when his 
son, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author, was four years old. 

Hawthorne’s mother came also from an old English family, 
that of Richard Manning, of St. Petrox Parish, Dartmouth, 
England. She was a beautiful and highly gifted young lady 
in 1800 when she married Nathaniel Hathorne. Their chil¬ 
dren were Elizabeth, Nathaniel, and Louisa. In 1808 when 
she received news of her husband’s death, she called her three 
children to her and told them of the tragedy. Then, at the 
age of twenty-eight, young and beautiful, she retired to her 
room to remain in seclusion for the more than forty years of 
life that remained to her. These years were marked, not by 


XX 


INTRODUCTION 


dejection and moroseness, but by serenity and sweetness— 
her devotion to her lost husband. 

II. HAWTHORNE FROM BOYHOOD TO MANHOOD 

It was Nathaniel Hawthorne who changed the spelling of 
the family name by adding the w. He was born on July 
4, 1804, at 27 Union Street, Salem, Massachusetts. Four 
years later his father died, and the widow with her three 
children moved to her father’s home at 12 Herbert Street. 
Here the little family lived happily for some time. Here it 
was that Nathaniel spent his ninth to twelfth years, largely 
in study and reading because of an injury to his foot re¬ 
ceived while playing baseball. His study was supervised by 
the famous Dr. Worcester, who later compiled a dictionary, 
and his reading was directed by his mother, who placed in 
his hands an excellent choice of books. 

When Nathaniel was fourteen years of age, the family 
went to Raymond, near Sebago Lake, in Maine, to live with 
his Uncle Robert in the large house known as Manning’s 
folly. Here for a year Nathaniel enjoyed the wildness of 
solitude. In Sebago Lake he swam and fished in season, and 
on its frozen surface he skated in winter. He roamed the 
forests, musket in hand, and on one occasion he tracked 
through the snow for a great distance the footprints of a 
bear. Often'on stormy days he stayed at home to read or 
to regale his sisters with vivid stories of his intended sea 
voyages. A peculiarity of these stories was that they in¬ 
variably ended with the ship’s reaching the home port with 
Hawthorne unaccountably missing. 

Although Hawthorne did not realize it until many years 
later, the repeated sombre conclusions of these sea stories 
prompted his worried mother to send him back to Herbert 
Street in Salem to be prepared to enter college. Accordingly, 

/ 



Hawthorne’s Birthplace 
27 Union Street, Salem 


















XXII 


INTRODUCTION 


in the autumn of 1819, when Hawthorne was fifteen years 
old, he was entered in a day school. His final preparation 
for college was made under the instruction of a Salem lawyer 
named Benjamin Oliver. It was during this time that he 
was bookkeeper and secretary to his uncle, William Man¬ 
ning. In 1820, he was joined in Salem by his mother and 
sisters, and in the summer of the next year, when Nathaniel 
was seventeen years old, he entered Bowdoin College in 
Brunswick, Maine. 

In the mail stage to Brunswick, Hawthorne met a Bow¬ 
doin sophomore, Franklin Pierce, afterward President of 
the United States (1853-1857). At Bowdoin he presently 
met two other young men who were destined to be intimately 
associated with him: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to whom 
Hawthorne later gave the plot for Evangeline with full per¬ 
mission to use it, since he did not intend to use it himself; 
and Horatio Bridge, who, with the exception of Franklin 
Pierce, became Hawthorne’s most intimate friend. It was 
to Bridge that Hawthorne, in his senior year at college, con¬ 
fided the information that he had decided to devote his life 
to literature. Bridge at once responded with enthusiasm, 
and throughout the early years of Hawthorne’s literary 
struggles constantly wrote him long letters of encourage¬ 
ment, and interceded with other acquaintances in Haw¬ 
thorne’s behalf. Of all the friendships Hawthorne formed 
at college, those with Longfellow, Pierce, and Bridge were 
most happy and lasting. 

Hawthorne’s college career was not particularly marked 
with either scholarship or misdemeanors. True, his Latin 
compositions attracted special attention because of their 
facility, and his English compositions were highly com¬ 
mended; but he was often out hunting or fishing with Horatio 
Bridge when the college authorities supposed he was at his 
studies. Near the close of the year preceding his enrollment 


INTRODUCTION 


xxm 


in Bowdoin, he had written to his mother, “I am quite recon¬ 
ciled to going to college, since I am to spend the vacations 
with you. Yet four years of the best part of my life is a great 
deal to throw away.” Near the close of his freshman year, he 
wrote to his sister that he had, “in a great measure, discon¬ 
tinued the practice of playing cards. One of the students has 
been suspended, lately, for this offence, and two of our class 
have been fined.” These quotations quite well represent his 
attitude toward attending college, and his conduct while 
there. Julian Hawthorne says about his father’s college life 
that it “shows him to have been independent, self-contained, 
and disposed to follow his own humor and judgment, without 
undue reference to the desires or regulations of the college 
faculty.” 

Hawthorne was graduated' from Bowdoin in 1825. Hav¬ 
ing sufficient means to care for his financial needs, and having 
decided to give his life to literature, he returned to Salem 
and began his career. For twelve years he kept pa¬ 
tiently and courageously at work, but his short stories and 
historical sketches, published anonymously, made very little 
appeal to the general public. To a selected few, however, 
these stories did appear attractive, and among these interested 
readers was Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who lived with her 
parents and two sisters at 53 Charter Street, Salem. In the 
years from 1811 to 1816, she and her sisters had been play¬ 
mates with Elizabeth, Nathaniel, and Louisa Hawthorne, who 
lived in the adjoining yard. Then the Peabody family had 
moved and the Hawthornes had gone to Maine. Upon their 
return to Salem, Miss Elizabeth Peabody followed her moth¬ 
er’s example of seclusion, thus making a renewal of the family 
acquaintance difficult. Although from 1830 to 1836 Haw¬ 
thorne’s stories, published in the New England Magazine, 
attracted her attention, it was not until 1837 that she discov¬ 
ered the author to be Madame Hawthorne’s son. 



The Grimshaw House 

53 Charter Street, Salem. Sophia Peabody’s early home 





































INTRODUCTION 


XXV 


One evening during the following year one of the Misses 
Peabody succeeded in getting Mr. Hawthorne and his sisters 
to call. In a letter written years afterwards this Miss Pea¬ 
body says, “Sophia, who was still an invalid, was in her 
chamber. As soon as I could, I ran upstairs and said to 
her, ‘0 Sophia, you must get up and dress and come down! 
The Hawthornes are here, and you never saw anything so 
splendid as he is,—he is handsomer than Lord Byron! ’ She 
laughed, but refused to come, remarking that since he had 
called once, he would call again.” He did call again; Sophia 
this time came down, and the first period of Hawthorne’s 
literary career was ended. 

Hawthorne’s love for Sophia Peabody probably hastened, 
rather than caused, his decision to engage in a commercial 
activity. At any rate, in the same year that he met her he 
let it be known that he wished commercial employment. 
This announcement came to the attention of the historian, 
George Bancroft, whom President Van Buren had appointed 
Collector of the Port of Boston. Mr. Bancroft secured a 
position for Hawthorne as measurer in the Boston Custom 
House, the appointment becoming effective in January, 1839. 
Near the close of 1838 he and Miss Peabody became engaged, 
with a stipulation on her part that they were not to be mar¬ 
ried unless she should regain her health. For this reason 
the engagement was not announced. 

Mr. Hawthorne continued in his position in the Custom 
House two years, and then, in April, 1841, invested one thou¬ 
sand dollars of his savings in Brook Farm, an experiment in 
community of interests to which all members contributed of 
their means and their work, and shared in the products of 
their labors. Contact with the experiment proved to Haw¬ 
thorne that it was impracticable. He ceased his cooperative 
labor in August, and although he spent the following winter at 
the Farm, it was as a boarder only. On the ninth of July, 



The Custom House — Salem 










INTRODUCTION 


XXVll 


1842, the miracle of her restoration to health having taken 
place, Sophia Peabody and Nathaniel Hawthorne were mar¬ 
ried at her father’s home, now at 13 West Street, Boston; 
and together they took up their life at the Old Manse in 
Concord. 


III. HAWTHORNE’S WIFE 

Francis Peabody, from Yorkshire, in the north of England, 
came to America in 1640. He had ten children, and ten 
children were born in each succeeding family for several 
generations. Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, the father of Sophia, 
was a dentist of Boston and Salem. Sophia’s mother was 
descended from the Hunt family, who were Tory Cavaliers 
in England and came to America as refugees from Marston 
Moor. 

Sophia, the youngest of three daughters, was born in 1809. 
During her teething period, which was unusually difficult, 
she was overdosed with drugs to relieve pain. From the 
effects of this she never recovered, and from the age of 
twelve until she was thirty-one, she suffered uninterruptedly 
from an acute nervous headache. During this period, how¬ 
ever, she dwelt apart in a secluded room to escape the noises 
that were so painful. Since she could not endure the sound 
of knives and forks, she took her meals alone, also. When 
the pain was not too severe, she spent her time in reading 
and study. She learned to read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, 
and in drawing, painting, and sculpture became remarkably 
proficient. A study of her life and character is a lesson in 
the nobility that comes from enduring pain with patience and 
sweetness. From the time she met Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
her health began to mend until she was perfectly well at the 
time of their marriage. Thereafter she continued in excellent 
health and became the greatest blessing of Hawthorne’s life. 


XXV111 


INTRODUCTION 


IV. LIFE IN THE OLD MANSE 

In the Old Manse at Concord, Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne 
lived three years (1842-1845) of quiet happiness. While 
Mrs. Hawthorne was busied with her household activities, her 
painting, her journal, and her letters, Mr. Hawthorne’s sum¬ 
mer days began with fishing in the Concord river for an 
appetizing breakfast, inspection and cultivation of the gar¬ 
den, and a forenoon of writing. After luncheon and a 
nap, he and Mrs. Hawthorne took a walk or read in the 
shade, and toward evening the garden or the orchard again 
occupied his attention. Practically every evening he enjoyed 
a swim in the Concord. In the winter months ice-skating 
and wood-chopping took the place of the summer diversions of 
fishing, swimming, and gardening, and long evenings were 
spent with Mrs. Hawthorne at her work-basket and Mr. 
Hawthorne reading aloud in his exquisite manner. 

This daily routine was, of course, interrupted by social 
calls from people of the neighborhood, the most important 
of whom were Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry 
David Thoreau (1817-1862). They came either singly or 
together, not only to talk, but also to play. In a letter quoted 
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851-1926) in her Memories 
of Hawthorne (1923) Mrs. Hawthorne describes Hawthorne, 
Thoreau, and Emerson skating together on the Concord: 

Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring 
dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice. . . . 
Mr. Hawthorne . . . moved like a self-impelled Greek 
statue, stately and grave. Mr. Emerson closed the line, 
evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headfore¬ 
most, half lying on the air. He came in to rest himself, 
and said to me that Mr. Hawthorne was a tiger, a bear, a 
lion,—in short a satyr, and there was no tiring him out; 

. . . And then, turning upon me that kindling smile for 
which he is so memorable, he added, “Mr. Hawthorne is 
such an Ajax, who can cope with him!” 



ix***: 


m 



if 




r.;->;•;•> THP^f^lT^hWifri*V 

■> 




f. 



The Old Manse 




















XXX 


INTRODUCTION 

These years were happy ones, made even more memorable in 
1844 by the birth of their first child, Una, namesake of the 
Una in Spenser's Faerie Queene. 

In August, 1845, the Hawthornes left the Old Manse because 
the magazine publishers who accepted Hawthorne’s stories 
seldom paid him, and he was at the end of his resources. 
For a while the family visited relatives both in Boston and 
Salem. Then, in March, 1846, Hawthorne was appointed 
Surveyor of the Custom House at Salem. They continued 
their residence in Carver Street, Boston, until after the birth 
of Julian in June, 1846. From that year on they lived with 
Hawthorne’s mother in Herbert Street, Salem, until Septem¬ 
ber, 1847, when they moved to 14 Mall Street. This was a 
more commodious house and gave Madame Hawthorne, Eliza¬ 
beth, and Louisa, who accompanied them in the removal, a 
suite of rooms wholly distinct from the part of the house oc¬ 
cupied by Mr. Hawthorne’s family. It also afforded a quiet 
study for Mr. Hawthorne. 

A man of letters, he was still obscure and penniless. The 
Custom House yielded only a meagre salary, but it 
gave him the germ of a story. Then, through political man¬ 
euvering, members of the opposite political party succeeded 
in depriving him of his office. This occurred in June, 1849. 
In July, Hawthorne’s mother became ill, and died on July 
31. Faced with financial calamity and grief such as few men 
feel, Hawthorne spent the next months in writing. He 
emerged from both disaster and grief a famous man. The 
Scarlet Letter, the work that made him famous, was pub¬ 
lished in April of the year 1850 in an edition of four thousand 
copies, which was exhausted within ten days. Late in the 
month of this successful publication, he removed his family 
from Salem to Lenox in the Berkshire Hills in western Massa¬ 
chusetts. He was forty-six years old and a recognized man 
of letters both in England and America. Near the end of 


INTRODUCTION xxxi 

August he began the actual writing of The House of the 
Seven Gables. 

V. AT WORK ON THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN 
GABLES 

His family at this time consisted of Mrs. Hawthorne, Una, 
aged six, and Julian, aged four. His residence at Lenox was 
a farmhouse of adequate size, to which was attached a large, 
two-storied hencoop. The house was painted red, so red 
that Mrs. Hawthorne reported her husband as saying that it 
looked like the Scarlet Letter. The hencoop was fully in¬ 
habited by hens, to each of which the children soon gave a 
proper name. Near by, in a neighboring farmyard, were 
cows, and a barn with a hay loft. All of this made a veritable 
paradise for children who had spent all, or nearly all, of their 
lives in the village of Salem. 

The home life of this family seems ideal. The house in 
which they lived at this time is always described as “the 
little red farmhouse.” Such a designation, however, is char¬ 
acteristic of the native inhabitants of Massachusetts. A 
house in that state would have to be large indeed not to 
be referred to as a “little house.” In her letters, Mrs. Haw¬ 
thorne tells her mother that they “seem to have such a large 
house inside.” It was a house of eight rooms, which Mrs. 
Hawthorne enumerates as the hall (a commodious living 
room with a fireplace), the drawing room, the dining room, a 
bath room, a charming boudoir (for Mr. and Mrs. Haw¬ 
thorne), a stairway leading from the dining room to Mr. 
Hawthorne’s study, the golden chamber, the guest chamber 
(used for Julian’s bed room), and Una’s chamber. In Una’s 
chamber the walls were hung with one of Raphael’s angels, an 
engraving of Dawn, and a lithograph of a superb tree. On the 
wall at the head of the stairway hung Michael Angelo’s fres- 


XXX11 


INTRODUCTION 


cos of prophets and sibyls. The bath room walls were deco¬ 
rated with the “Petit Soldat Orphelin,” two pictures of 
Psyche and “the magnificent Tuba-Rheda. ,, 

In Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne’s room were Claude’s land¬ 
scape of the Golden Calf, Salvator Rosa’s Forest, the “lovely 
comos,” Raphael’s Transfiguration, Endymion, and Leonardo 
da Vinci’s Madonna au Bas-relief. The hall, or living 
room, was decorated with the Madonna del Pesce and Craw¬ 
ford’s sculpture, “Glory to God in the Highest.” In the same 
letter in which Mrs. Hawthorne describes these surroundings, 
she lists the prices they pay for milk, butter, eggs, potatoes, 
buckwheat, wood, charcoal, veal, mutton, and beef. She does 
not mention the kitchen, but there must have been one, thus 
making the “little red farmhouse” include eight rooms, with 
kitchen and bath! 

A typical day in the life of the Hawthorne family in this year 
of the writing of The House of the Seven Gables may well 
be chosen from mid-winter, and its description abbreviated 
from Mrs. Hawthorne’s exquisite letters and Julian’s mem¬ 
oirs. It is dawn. From the guest chamber comes a power¬ 
ful voice, “I want to get up!” From Una’s chamber a 
charming voice calls, “Bon-jour, mamma! bon-jour, papa!” 
Mr. Hawthorne rises and makes a fire in the bath room. 
“Down rush the two birds.” Mr. Hawthorne gives them a 
shower bath from pails of water which he pours over them. 
“Oh, how nice,” says the girl. “How I am refreshing,” says 
the boy. Then comes the vigorous rubbing before the warm 
fire; dressing; and leaping, running, and springing about the 
room. Mr. Hawthorne goes out to feed the hens. The fam¬ 
ily eat breakfast, and the author disappears into his study 
to add a few more pages to The House of the Seven Gables. 

While he is at work, the children go out to play, or sit 
side by side while Mrs. Hawthorne, busy with her work- 
basket, gives them oral lessons in French, arithmetic, history, 


INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

and geography. At noon Mr. Hawthorne comes down from 
his study, causing “great rejoicing throughout his kingdom.” 
The family dine. Then Mrs. Hawthorne reads to them 
for an hour in the living room. They wish on this par¬ 
ticular day to have her read about Christ. The reading is 
interrupted when Una must get out of her chair for some¬ 
thing and Julian at once takes possession. Una complains 
and repossesses the chair. Mr. Hawthorne addresses her: 
“What did Christ say?—if a man take your cloak, give him 
your coat also. Do you know what he meant?” In a low 
voice, Una replies, “Yes, I know.” She soon rises and gives 
Julian the chair, which he receives with a radiant smile, 
but resigns again, having caught the spirit of the occasion. 

The reading hour is over. Mr. Hawthorne and the chil¬ 
dren go out into the icy atmosphere and seat themselves 
one behind another upon the big sled. Off they go “in head¬ 
long career through the snowdrifts” down the long hill 
toward Tanglewood and the lake. About six o’clock the 
children go to bed, “very happy, full of messages of Jove, 
respect, and thanks! ’ ” The long, beautiful evening belongs 
to Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne. Mr. Hawthorne reads aloud. 
This evening he is reading De Quincey. He has just finished 
reading David Copper field. Of this entertainment, Mrs. 
Hawthorne says, “I never heard such reading. It is better 
than any acting or opera.” 

Such days as the one just described were often interrupted 
by callers, for the fame of The Scarlet Letter brought many 
visitors, some of whom came merely to satisfy their curiosity 
by staring at the author of this widely circulated book. 
Among the callers was a Mr. Ehninger, a young artist from 
New York, who had studied design very faithfully in Europe. 
He called to show Mr. Hawthorne several illustrations which 
he had drawn from descriptions in Hawthorne’s Twice Told 
Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, and The Scarlet Letter . 


xxxiv 


INTRODUCTION 


The illustration most pleasing to his host was the one of 
Hester Prynne, of The Scarlet Letter, coming out of the prison 
door. 

Mrs. Hawthorne remarks that they saw in Lenox a great 
many more of their friends and acquaintances than they 
had during the five years of residence at Salem. Among 
these were Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Mr. and Mrs. 
James Russell Lowell. 

A new acquaintance formed at Lenox proved to be a 
source of special entertainment to the Hawthornes. This was 
Herman Melville, who resided on a farm near Pittsfield, a 
few miles away. Mr. Melville at that time was writing 
Moby Dick, about which he talked and wrote a great deal 
to Mr. Hawthorne, for the two became so intimate that if 
duties prevented Mr. Melville from making his customary 
visit, he would write a letter instead. Mrs. Hawthorne after¬ 
ward told the children about one of these evening visits, an 
account of which Julian Hawthorne includes in Hawthorne 
and His Wife, as follows: 

One evening . . . he . . . began to relate the 

story of a fight which he had seen on an island in the 
Pacific, between some savages, and of the prodigies of 
valor one of them performed with a heavy club. The 
narrative was extremely graphic; and when Melville had 
gone, and Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne were talking over 
his visit, the latter said, “Where is that club with which 
Mr. Melville was laying about him so?” Mr. Hawthorne 
thought he must have taken it with him; Mrs. Haw¬ 
thorne thought he had put it in the corner; but it was 
not to be found. The next time Melville came, they 
asked him about it, whereupon it appeared that the club 
was still in the Pacific island, if it were anywhere. 

Another extract from Julian’s memoirs of this time will 
fittingly conclude this representation of the home life of the 
author of The House of the Seven Gables. 


INTRODUCTION 


XXXV 


After finishing The House of the Seven Gables, Haw¬ 
thorne allowed himself a vacation of about four months; 
and there is every reason to suppose that he enjoyed it. 
He had recovered his health, he had done his work, he 
was famous, and the region in which he dwelt was beauti¬ 
ful and inspiriting. At all events he made those spring 
days memorable to his children. He made them boats 
to sail on the lake, and kites to fly in the air; he took 
them fishing and flower-gathering, and tried (unsuccess¬ 
fully for the present) to teach them swimming. Mr. 
Melville used to ride or drive up, in the evenings, with 
his great dog, and the children used to ride on the dog’s 
back. ... In the previous autumn, and still more 
in the succeeding one, they all went nutting, and filled a 
certain disused oven in the house with such bags upon 
bags of nuts as not a hundred children could have de¬ 
voured in the ensuing winter. The children’s father 
displayed extraordinary activity and energy on these 
nutting expeditions; standing on the ground at the foot 
of a tall walnut-tree, he would bid them turn their backs 
and cover their eyes with their hands; then they would 
hear, for a few seconds, a sound of rustling and scrambling, 
and immediately after, a shout; whereupon they would 
uncover their eyes and gaze upwards; and lo! there was 
their father—who but an instant before, as it seemed, had 
been beside them—swaying and soaring high aloft on 
the topmost branches, a delightful mystery and miracle. 
And then down would rattle showers of ripe nuts, which 
the children would diligently pick up, and stuff into their 
capacious bags. It was all a splendid holiday; and they 
cannot remember when their father was not their play¬ 
mate, or when they ever desired or imagined any other 
playmate than he. 

On May 20, 1851, his youngest child, Rose Hawthorne, 
was born. About two weeks after, he began the writing of 
the Wonder-Book, which he completed by the middle of 
July. On the twenty-eighth of July Mrs. Hawthorne, with 
Una and Rose, left Lenox for a visit with her mother and 
sister in West Newton, leaving Mr. Hawthorne and Julian 


XXXVI 


INTRODUCTION 


for a period of three weeks alone in Lenox, save for the 
ministrations of a negro cook, “a stem and incorruptible 
African, and a housekeeper by the wrath of God.” Their 
adventures are told in minute detail in extracts from Mr. 
Hawthorne’s journals, which Julian includes in Hawthorne 
and His Wife under the title “Twenty Days with Julian 
and Bunny.” On the twenty-first of November, 1851, Mr. 
Hawthorne removed his family and household goods to West 
Newton, Massachusetts, thus putting an end to the events 
and the environment associated with the writing of The 
House of the Seven Gables. 

VI. HAWTHORNE AND HIS FAMILY ABROAD 

In West Newton, the family took up their residence in 
the home of Horace Mann, who, with his family, was to 
spend the winter in Washington, D. C. In this home, Haw¬ 
thorne completed his third novel, The Blithedale Romance, 
the plot and materials of which were taken from his Brook 
Farm experiences just ten years earlier, in 1841-1842. By 
June sixth in 1852 they had purchased and were settled in 
the first home of their own, which they named the Wayside. 
The house had belonged jointlyjo Emerson and A. Bronson 
Alcott, father of Louisa Alcott, who is known to all boys 
and girls. It stands some two miles from the Old Manse and 
is on the Boston highway, about three-quarters of a mile 
from Emerson’s residence. 

Hawthorne resided at the Wayside only a year, and then 
he sailed with his family for Liverpool, England, in June, 
1853, to take up his duties as United States Consul. During 
the year at the Wayside he had written Tanglewood Tales 
and a Biography of Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), who was 
now a candidate for President. He and Hawthorne had kept 
in touch with each other since college days. It was both 


INTRODUCTION 


xxxvii 


fitting and natural that Hawthorne should lend his prestige 
as an author to the assistance of his friend’s candidacy. 
This he did, and Pierce was elected. Then Pierce, as Presi¬ 
dent, appointed Hawthorne to a consulship, the highest 
salaried office at his disposal. Hawthorne made an excellent 
consul, the routine of which office he describes effectively in 
“Consular Experiences,” the first sketch in the book entitled 
Our Old Home, which consists of sketches about English life, 
English people, and places of literary interest in England. 

The home life of the Hawthorne family in England con¬ 
tinued to be as delightful as it was in Lenox. Their lives 
had been saddened at the Wayside, first, by the tragic death 
of Hawthorne’s sister Louisa on July 27, 1852, in the burn¬ 
ing of the steamship Henry Clay on the Hudson River, and 
in the following winter, by the death of Mrs. Hawthorne’s 
mother. But they had the happy faculty of surviving sor¬ 
row. It was much the same family in Liverpool that we 
saw in Lenox. Una was now nine, Julian seven, and Rose 
two. The surroundings were grand by contrast, but the 
family graced the setting. In one of her letters, quoted by 
Rose in Memories of Hawthorne, Mrs. Hawthorne describes 
a dinner to which they were invited as chief guests at the 
home of a Mr. Holland: 

The table was very handsome; two enormous silver 
dish covers, with the gleam of Damascus blades, putting 
out all the rest of the light. After the soup, these covers 
were removed, revealing a boiled turbot under one, and 
fried fish under the other. The fish was replaced by two 
other enormous dishes with shining covers; and then 
the whole table was immediately covered with silver 
dishes; and in the centre was a tall silver stand holding 
a silver bowl of celery. It would be useless to try to 
tell you all the various dishes. A boiled turkey was 
before Mrs. Holland and a roasted goose before Mr. 
Holland; and in the intermediate spaces, cutlets, fricas¬ 
sees, ragouts, tongue, chicken-pies, and many things 


XXXV111 


INTRODUCTION 


whose names I did not know, and on a side-table a boiled 
round of beef as large as the dome of St. Peter’s. The 
pastry of the chicken-pie was of very elaborate sculpture. 
It was laid in a silver plate, an oak vine being precisely 
cut all round, and flowers and fruits moulded on the top. 
It really was a shame to spoil it. All of these were then 
swept off in a very noiseless manner. Grouse and 
pheasants are always served with the sweets in England, 
and they appeared at either end of the table. 

Mr. Hawthorne had to attend many such dinners, for 
the English were very hospitable and respectful toward the 
American consul. It is needless to say that he enjoyed his 
walks with Julian more than he did the state dinners. Julian 
says he was very talkative on these rambles, telling him, 
among a multitude of other wonderful tales, about the amaz¬ 
ing adventures which he had with “a certain General Quattle- 
bum, ... a magician and enchanter of the first rank.” 
On such walks, if any unaccountable or absurd mishap oc¬ 
curred, it always turned out that the General was at the 
bottom of it. Occasionally, the younger pedestrian would 
feel the light stroke of a cane across his back; looking round, 
no one w^ould be there, and his father was at his side appar¬ 
ently in deep abstraction. “Father, somebody hit me with 
a stick.” “Ah, it must have^been Quattlebum!” And, al¬ 
though the son suspected, he was never able to discover 
Quattlebum incarnated in the person of his father. 

During the four years of his consulship (1853-1857), al¬ 
though Hawthorne was compelled, more than he was willing, 
to attend state functions and social affairs, he was too modest 
to seek the acquaintance of his great literary contemporaries 
in England. This was altogether characteristic of him both 
at home and abroad. He was lionized by a certain group 
of men and women as far as he would permit, but he never 
sought the company of the great. Among the contemporaries 
whose society he missed were Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot, 


INTRODUCTION 


XXXIX 


Trollope, Arnold, Swinburne, Carlyle, and Tennyson. It 
happened that he met Mr. and Mrs. Robert Browning in 
England and later became well acquainted with them in 
Italy. The only other literary people he met in England 
were Charles Reade, Douglas Jerrold, and Macaulay. 

After the consular duties were fulfilled, the Hawthorne 
family journeyed through France to Italy where, in Rome 
and Florence, they spent the time from January, 1858, to 
May, 1859, returning in June of that year to England. The 
sojourn in Italy was marked as the happiest period of Haw¬ 
thorne’s life as well as the period of severest anxiety. In 
the second winter, Una was attacked with the Roman fever, 
with which she was ill during a period of four months, at 
first confined to her room only a part of the time, and then 
to her bed, and finally requiring all the skill of medicine 
and expert nursing apparently to no avail, until her life 
was despaired of. At length, when all hope was gone, the 
fever subsided, as by a miracle, and Una slowly began to 
mend, although she never regained her accustomed well¬ 
being. It is said by all authorities that Hawthorne never 
recovered from the strain of this ordeal, and that he began 
to fail from this year. This seems contrary to the character 
of the man. It should be remembered that during the pre¬ 
ceding winter, upon their arrival in Rome, Hawthorne suf¬ 
fered for weeks with a virulent influenza, which must have 
affected his strong constitution, and might well have ac¬ 
counted for the mental and spiritual fatigue that laid its 
heavy hand upon him after the Roman days, particularly 
after his return to America. 

Fortunately, the summer between these trying winters 
was a very happy one. Hawthorne was housed with his 
family first at Casa Bella in Florence, and then at a great 
and ancient castle outside of Florence, belonging to the 
family of Montauto. Hiram Powers, the sculptor, and 


xl 


INTRODUCTION 


Robert and Elizabeth Browning were delightful associates 
all through, the summer. The whole atmosphere was alto¬ 
gether to Hawthorne’s taste. He often referred to it as the 
happiest period of his life. His whole Italian experience 
is reflected in his last great novel, The Marble Faun. 

This novel, Hawthorne remained in England (1859-1860) 
to complete. The book was published in March, 1860, under 
the title, Transformation. It caused a great deal of dis¬ 
cussion in England, and general dissatisfaction because the 
English readers felt that Hawthorne left everything in the 
end just where the story began, and they wanted him to 
finish it. Julian says, “There was a general demand for an 
‘explanation’ of the mysteries of the tale; and at last Haw¬ 
thorne, in a half-ironic mood, wrote the short chapter now 
appended to the book. Nothing, of course, is explained; it 
was impossible to explain to the reader his own stupidity. 
It was not till many years afterwards, when Hawthorne was 
in his grave, that a more intelligent criticism began to per¬ 
ceive that the story had been told after all.” 

From the time Hawthorne was thirty-five years old, he 
was a friend of his publisher, James T. Fields, of the firm 
of Ticknor and Fields. In his Yesterdays with Authors, 
Mr. Fields tells us about the voyage home with the Haw¬ 
thorne family. Mr. Fields had spent the year of 1859-1860 
abroad, and in April received word from Hawthorne that he 
had reserved passage for both Mr. Fields and his family in 
the steamer sailing on June 16. It is to this fortunate ar¬ 
rangement that we owe a rare glimpse of Hawthorne on this 
sea voyage of ten days. Mr. Fields says: 

Hawthorne’s love for the sea amounted to a passionate 
worship; and while I (the worst sailor probably on this 
planet) was longing, spite of the good company on board , 1 

1 Besides the Hawthornes, Harriet Beecher Stowe was a 
passenger. 


INTRODUCTION 


xli 


to reach land as soon as possible, Hawthorne was con¬ 
stantly saying in his quiet, earnest way, “I should like to 
sail on and on forever, and never touch the shore again.” 
He liked to stand alone in the bow of the ship and see 
the sun go down, and he was never tired of walking the 
deck at midnight. I used to watch his dark, solitary 
figure under the stars, pacing up and down some un¬ 
frequented part of the vessel, musing and half melancholy. 
Sometimes he would lie down beside me and commiserate 
my unquiet condition. . . . His own appetite was 
excellent, and day after day he used to come on deck 
and describe to me what he had eaten. Of course his 
accounts were always exaggerated, for my amusement. 
. . . Among the viands he had consumed, I remember 
he stated there were Several yards of steak,” and a 
“whole warrenful of Welsh rabbits.” The “divine spirit 
of Humor” was upon him during many of those days 
at sea, and he revelled in it like a careless child. 

VII. LAST DAYS 

After an absence of seven years Hawthorne arrived again 
at the Wayside in the latter part of June, 1860. Una was 
now sixteen, Julian fourteen, and Rose nine. Mrs. Haw¬ 
thorne was fifty-one and Hawthorne was, on July 4, fifty- 
six. Up to this time the education of all three children had 
been provided by the personal instruction of both parents, 
and tutors who were engaged for special lines of Work. In 
the autumn of this year, however, Julian was sent to the 
private school of a Mr. Frank Sanborn in Concord. This 
arranged for, Hawthorne set about remodeling and enlarging 
the Wayside, .including the construction of a tower, especially 
for his study. In this tower, Hawthorne wrote Our Old 
Home, Septimus Felton, Dr. Grimshawe, and the beginning 
of The Dolliver Romance, which he never completed. Of 
these works, Our Old Home is written in Hawthorne’s best 
style. The title has a personal meaning, for England was 
the old home of the ancestors of both the Peabodys and 


xlii 


INTRODUCTION 


the Hawthornes. Hawthorne’s health was visibly failing, 
and the Civil war, with which he was out of all patience, 
weighed upon his sensitive spirit. His opinion was that 
since the war had to be fought, only old men like himself 
should be enlisted to do the fighting, thus saving the lives 
of young men to be their country’s blessing. 

In the years from 1861 to 1871, Hawthorne’s friend, James 
T. Fields, was editor of the Atlantic Monthly. During the 
period of the war (1861-1865), the magazine continued to 
devote itself to fiction, essays, poetry, and literary criticism, 
but there were also each month an editorial and a special 
war article, by which the magazine endeavored to influence 
public opinion. The sketches that make up Our Old Home 
were first published in the Atlantic Monthly at this time. 
Of the special war papers, the most interesting are Emer¬ 
son’s The President’s Proclamation (November, 1862), Haw¬ 
thorne’s Chiefly about War Matters (July, 1862), Holmes’s 
My Hunt for the Captain (December, 1862), and Hale’s 
The Man without a Country (December, 1863). 

Hawthorne’s article grew out of a visit to Washington 
and the war front in April, 1862. It was so frank in expres¬ 
sion that Fields told Hawthorne he hesitated to publish it 
without comment; whereupon Hawthorne volunteered to do 
the commenting himself. The result was that the article 
was published in part as originally written, with horrified 
marginal comments that such views could be expressed by 
anyone holding himself to be a patriotic American. This 
pleased all critics, and the editor was both praised and con¬ 
demned for the comments. The portion omitted pertained 
to a call on President Lincoln in the White House. After 
the death of both Hawthorne and Lincoln, Fields published 
it in his Yesterdays with Authors. The account includes a 
most valuable portrait of Abraham Lincoln, coming as it 
does from the practised, accurate observation of Hawthorne: 


INTRODUCTION 


xliii 


There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor 
the uncouthness of his movement; and yet it seemed as 
if I had been in the habit of seeing him daily, and had 
shaken hands with him a thousand times in some village 
street; so true was he to the aspect of the pattern 
American, though w T ith a certain extravagance which, 
possibly, I exaggerated still further by the delighted 
eagerness with which I took it in. If put to guess his 
calling and livelihood, I should have taken him for a 
country school-master as soon as anything else. He was 
dressed in a rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, un¬ 
brushed, and worn so faithfully that the suit had adapted 
itself to the curves and angularities of his figure, and 
had grown to be an outer skin of the man. He had 
shabby slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still 
unmixed with gray, stiff, somewhat bushy, and had 
apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor comb 
that morning, after the disarrangement of the pillow; 
and as to a nightcap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing 
of such effeminacies. His complexion is dark and sallow, 
betokening, I fear, an insalubrious atmosphere around 
the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and an 
impending brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his 
mouth are very strongly defined. 

The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you 
would meet anywhere in the length and breadth of the 
States; but, withal, it is redeemed, illuminated, softened, 
and brightened by a kindly though serious look out of 
his eyes, and an expression of homely sagacity that seems 
weighted with rich results of village experience. A great 
deal of native sense; no bookish cultivation, no refine¬ 
ment; honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in 
some sort, shy,—at least, endowed with a sort of tact 
and wisdom that are akin to craft, and would impel him, 
I think, to take an antagonist in the flank, rather than 
make a bull-run at him right in front. But, on the whole, 

I like this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the 
homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my 
small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe 
for a ruler as any man whom it would have been prac¬ 
ticable to put in his place. 


xliv 


INTRODUCTION 


Hawthorne’s death was characteristic of his life. We 
shall include just the last glimpses of him. Julian observes 
that Hawthorne must have known at the beginning of the 
year 1864 that it would be his last. “He seemed to admit 
his feebleness and physical decay, and to make a gentle 
sport of it. He bowed to the inevitable, not with a groan 
but with a smile. ... He professed to take a hopeful 
view of everything, and perhaps succeeded in concealing the 
extent of his illness from every one except his wife.” In 
May it was arranged that he and ex-President Pierce should 
take a journey together through northern New England, in 
the hope of benefiting his health. 

Julian says, “A few days before he and Mr. Pierce set 
forth, I came up to Concord from Cambridge to make some 
request of him. I remained only an hour, having to take the 
afternoon train back to the college. ... I said good-by, 
and went to the door, where I stood a moment, looking back 
into the room. . . . The expression of his face was full 
of beautiful kindness,—the gladness of having given his son 
a pleasure, and perhaps something more, that I did not then 
know of. His aspect at that moment, and the sunshine in 
the little room, are vivid in my memory. I never saw my 
father again.” And Rose says, “I cannot express how brave 
he seemed to me. The last time I saw him, he was leaving 
the house to take the journey for his health which led sud¬ 
denly to the next world. My mother was to go to the sta¬ 
tion with him. ... My father certainly knew, what she 
vaguely felt, that he would never return. Like a snow image 
of an unbending but an old, old man, he stood for a moment 
gazing at me. My mother sobbed, as she walked beside him 
to the carriage.” 

This was about the middle of May. Traveling small dis¬ 
tances, Pierce and Hawthorne arrived at Plymouth, New 
Hampshire, on the eighteenth. Hawthorne had a small note- 


INTRODUCTION 


xlv 

book with him, and wrote briefly the results of each day’s 
journey, but there was no entry on May eighteenth. Haw¬ 
thorne retired early; the door between the two rooms oc¬ 
cupied by Pierce and Hawthorne was left open; and once or 
twice Pierce went in to see if Hawthorne slept well. Some 
time after midnight, Pierce was aroused by the howling of 
a dog, and again went in to see Hawthorne. He found him 
in the same easy, natural position as before, but he was not 
breathing; he had died in his sleep. On the afternoon of 
May 23,1864, as the carriage containing Mrs. Hawthorne left 
the gates of the cemetery where her husband had been 
buried at “the top of the little hill, beneath a group of tall 
pines, where Hawthorne and his wife had often sat in days 
gone by,” on either side of the path there stood with un¬ 
covered heads in honor of Hawthorne and his wife, Long¬ 
fellow, Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, Pierce, and Emerson. 

********* 

The headstone of a grave in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery 
at Concord bears one word, Hawthorne. On a sunny hill¬ 
side looking toward the east in Kensal Green, a cemetery in 
London, England, is another headstone, which bears the in¬ 
scription, Sophia, Wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This grave 
has been there since a day late in February, 1871. Close 
beside is another grave. It is that of Una, whose body has 
rested there since the summer of 1877. 

VIII. HAWTHORNE’S CHILDREN 

Three marked characteristics were prominent in Haw¬ 
thorne: he possessed a mentality which gave him the keen 
insight and literary style which made him America’s greatest 
novelist; his physique was so perfect that it gave him not' 
only the appellation, “an athletic Apollo,” but also the ad¬ 
vantages which accompany dexterity and strength; his spirit 


xlvi INTRODUCTION 

was such that he looked with pity upon all weakness, and 
would spend time and money upon those who needed help. 
These characteristics are continued in his children. 

Una Hawthorne occupied her last years with charity work 
in London. After the death of her mother she prepared for 
publication her father’s manuscript of Septimus Felton. 

Forty years ago the short stories by Rose Hawthorne 
(Lathrop) were in demand in the magazine market, and 
her stories for children brightened the pages of St. Nicholas 
and Wide Awake. In 1888, she published a volume of poems 
entitled Along the Shore. She was an artist of considerable 
ability, and could easily have continued to greater heights, 
but she chose rather to give personal ministrations to the 
poor. In New York City and at Hawthorne, New York, 
she established homes for destitute women suffering from 
cancer, and formed an order known as Servants of Relief 
for Incurable Cancer. She was active and busy up to the 
time of her death in the year 1926. 

Julian Hawthorne, educated to follow the pursuit of 
engineering, for which he studied in Dresden, Germany, after 
four years at Harvard, occupied his time in this field only 
two years, 1870-1872, when he was hydrographic engineer 
in the department of docks, New York City. Since this 
time he has been a journalist and author. He has written 
more than twenty novels. His interesting and minute analysis 
of Rose Hawthorne appeared in the Atlantic Monthly of 
September, 1928, under the title, “A Daughter of Haw¬ 
thorne.” 


IX. SALEM TO-DAY 

A visit to the Salem of to-day reveals footprints of the an¬ 
cestry of Hawthorne. The old Curwin (or Corwin) house is 
there, but is not, as Lowell thought, the House of the Seven 
Gables, nor is it now in its original architecture. It is shown 


INTRODUCTION 


xlvii 


.as the Witch House. The scene of the witchcraft executions 
and the curse is now softened and made attractive as Gallows 
Hill Park. We find names that belong to the Hawthorne 
ancestry in Bowditch School, Palmer’s Cove Playground, 
Peabody Museum, the Hawthorne Hotel, Hawthorne Park, 
Hawthorne Boulevard, and the Hawthorne Monument, 
erected in 1925. At 27 Union Street, where Hawthorne was 
born, we find the original gambrel-roofed house just as it 
was in 1804, except that it now has a modern door and 
modern windows. It was built by Benjamin Pickman prior 
to 1685, and was purchased by Daniel Hathorne in 1772. 
At 12 Herbert Street, across the block, we find a great 
change. The Manning House in which Hawthorne spent so 
many years is now a tenement house, and is numbered 
10i /2 and 12. This house was built in 1790. On a pane of 
glass in Hawthorne’s room he scratched his name with a 
diamond. This pane, it is said, is still in the possession of 
his family. 

At 53 Charter Street, we find that the Peabody home is, in 
the interior, an entirely new place since it was destroyed by 
fire in 1915. The doorway, however, has been preserved, and 
may be seen at the Essex Institute. Except for the doorway, 
the exterior of the house remains in its original shape. The 
place is now a lodging house. Adjoining it the Charter Street 
cemetery is still preserved, with its ancient gravestones, in¬ 
cluding that of John Hathorne, the witch judge. At 14 
Mall Street, the house where Hawthorne’s mother died, and 
where he wrote The Scarlet Letter, remains as formerly, as 
does, of course, the Custom House, where Hawthorne was 
Surveyor when he lived on Mall Street. At 54 Turner Street, 
we see a house which is as much the House of the Seven 
Gables as any house in Salem, or in the world, is. It was 
built in 1669, and was the tollhouse of the Marblehead ferry. 
During Hawthorne’s residence in Salem it was occupied by 


xlviii 


INTRODUCTION 


his cousin, Miss Susan Ingersoll. In 1909 the house was. 
restored, and was used as the center of a neighborhood settle¬ 
ment work. Of all the historic places in Salem connected 
with Hawthorne it receives the greatest number of inquiries 
and visits from the pilgrims to Salem. 

Why is this house the House of the Seven Gables ? When 
we visit the place we are told that in Hawthorne’s time it 
did not have seven gables, and in one of Hawthorne’s letters 
to James T. Fields, we find that his House does have seven 
gables. Furthermore, this old Turner house which Haw¬ 
thorne used to visit so frequently when his cousin lived in it, 
has distinctive features which his House of the Seven Gables 
does not possess; namely, the swinging lights of the ships 
lying at anchor in the inner harbor within hailing distance, 
the familiar odor of kelp and eelgrass so much loved by 
Hawthorne and all sea-board dwellers, and the garden, the 
walls of which are washed by the ocean swell. 

No; the Turner house is not identified with the House of 
the Seven Gables in physical characteristics, or was not be¬ 
fore it was restored in 1909. Its identity rests upon a very 
interesting event told by Miss Susan Ingersoll. On one of 
Hawthorne’s visits she had told him that the house once 
had seven gables. Together they wenUTo the attic, where 
Miss Ingersoll pointed out beams and mortices to prove her 
statement. On the way down the crooked stairs, she heard 
him say to himself, aloud, “House of the Seven Gables—that 
sounds well.” We know that Hawthorne did not visit Salem 
while he was writing The House oj the Seven Gables, but the 
foregoing conversation took place not long before his de¬ 
parture, and is sufficient cause to identify this house as the 
House of the Seven Gables, since there is none with a greater 
claim to such fame. 


THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 
































































* 






















































AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly 
be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, 
both as to its fashion and material, which he would not 
have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be 
writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is pre¬ 
sumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the 
possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s 
experience. The former—while, as a work of art, it 
must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins un- 
pardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth 
of the human heart—has fairly a right to present that 
truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s 
own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may 
so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or 
mellow the lights, and deepen and enrich the shadows, of 
the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very 
moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, 
to mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and 
evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual sub¬ 
stance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly 
be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he 
disregard this caution. 

In the present work, the author has proposed to him¬ 
self—but with what success, fortunately, it is not for him 
to judge—to keep undeviatingly within his immunities. 
The point of view in which this tale comes under the Ro¬ 
mantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone 

li 


lii 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


time with the very present that is flitting away from us. 
It is a legend prolonging itself, from an epoch now gray 
in the distance, down into our own broad daylight, and 
bringing along with it some of its legendary mist, which 
the reader, according to his pleasure, may either disre¬ 
gard, or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the 
characters and events, for the sake of a picturesque effect. 
The narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture 
as to require this advantage, and, at the same time, to 
render it the more difficult of attainment. 

Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite 
moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. 
Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has pro¬ 
vided himself with a moral,—the truth, namely, that the 
wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive 
ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, 
becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would 
feel it a singular gratification if this romance might effec¬ 
tually convince mankind—or, indeed, any one man—of the 
folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or 
real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, 
thereby to maim and crush them, until the accumulated 
mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In 
good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to 
flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When 
Tomances do really teach anything, or produce any effec¬ 
tive operation, it is usually through a far more subtile 
process than the ostensible one. The author has consid¬ 
ered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to 
impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, 
rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at 
once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an un¬ 
gainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, 
fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


liii 


ever# step, and crowning the final development of a work 
of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any 
truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than 
at the first. 

The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual 
locality to the imaginary events of this narrative. If 
permitted by the historical connection,—which, though 
slight, was essential to his plan,—the author would very 
willingly have avoided anything of this nature. Not to 
speak of other objections, it exposes the romance to an 
inflexible and exceedingly dangerous species of criticism, 
by bringing his fancy-pictures almost into positive con¬ 
tact with the realities of the moment. It has been no 
part of his object, however, to describe local manners, 
nor in any way to meddle with the characteristics of a 
community for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a 
natural regard. He trusts not to be considered as unpar- 
donably offending by laying out a street that infringes 
upon nobody’s private rights, and appropriating a lot of 
land which had no visible owner, and building a house of 
materials long in use for constructing castles in the air. 
The personages of the tale—though they give themselves 
out to be of ancient stability and considerable prominence 
—are really of the author’s own making, or, at all events, 
of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no luster, nor 
their defects redound, in the remotest degree, to the dis¬ 
credit of the venerable town of which they profess to be 
inhabitants. He would be glad, therefore, if—especially 
in the quarter to which he alludes—the book may be read 
strictly as a romance, having a great deal more to do with 
the clouds overhead than with any portion of the actual 
soil of the County of Essex. 


Lenox, January 27, 1851, 



y<#* x* ** 




■»Xv 


VV 



H 

« 





House of the Seven Gables 

Salem, Massachusetts 

















THE 

HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


i 

THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 

Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England 
towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely 
peaked gables, facing towards various points of the com¬ 
pass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The 
street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon 
House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted be¬ 
fore the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the 
title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my occasional visits to 
the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon 
Street for the sake of passing through the shadow of these 
two antiquities,—the great elm-tree and the weather¬ 
beaten edifice. 

The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected 
me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not 
merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive, 
also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying 
vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be 
worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no 
small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, 
a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the 
result of artistic arrangement. But the story would in¬ 
clude a chain of events extending over the better part of 
two centuries, and, written out with reasonable ampli¬ 
tude, would fill a bigger folio volume, or a longer series of 

1 


2 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


duodecimos, than could prudently be appropriated to the 
annals of all New England during a similar period. It 
consequently becomes imperative to make short work 
with most of the traditionary lore of which the old Pyn- 
cheon House, otherwise known as the House of the Seven 
Gables, has been the theme. With a brief sketch, there¬ 
fore, of the circumstances amid which the foundation of 
the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse at its quaint ex¬ 
terior, as it grew black in the prevalent east wind,—point¬ 
ing, too, here and there, at some spot of more verdant mos¬ 
siness on its roof and walls,—we shall commence the real 
action of our tale at an epoch not very remote from the 
present day. Still, there will be a connection with the long 
past—a reference to forgotten events and personages, and 
to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly ob¬ 
solete—which, if adequately translated to the reader, 
would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes 
to make up the freshest novelty of human life. Hence, 
too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-re¬ 
garded truth, that the act of the passing generation is the 
germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in 
a far-distant time; that, together with the seed of the 
merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, 
they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, 
which may darkly overshadow their-posterity. 

The House of the Seven Gables, antique as it now looks, 
was not the first habitation erected by civilized man on 
precisely the same spot of ground. Pyncheon Street for¬ 
merly bore the humbler appellation of Maule’s Lane, from 
the name of the original occupant of the soil, before whose 
cottage-door it was a cow-path. A natural spring of soft 
and pleasant water—a rare treasure on the sea-girt penin¬ 
sula, where the Puritan settlement was made—had early 
induced Matthew Maule to build a hut, shaggy with 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


3 


thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote from 
what was then the center of the village. In the growth 
of the town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the 
site covered by this rude hovel had become exceedingly 
desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful per¬ 
sonage, who asserted plausible claims to the proprietor¬ 
ship of this, and a large adjacent tract of land, on the 
strength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pyn- 
cheon, the claimant, as we gather from whatever traits of 
him are preserved, was characterized by an iron energy of 
purpose. Matthew Maule, on the other hand, though 
an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what he 
considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded 
in protecting the acre or two of earth, which, with his own 
toil, he had hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his gar¬ 
den-ground and homestead. No written record of this 
dispute is known to be in existence. Our acquaintance 
with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition. 
It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to ven¬ 
ture a decisive opinion as to its merits; although it appears 
to have been at least a matter of doubt, whether Colonel 
Pyncheon’s claim were not unduly stretched, in order to 
make it cover the small metes and bounds of Matthew 
Maule. What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is 
the fact that this controversy between two ill-matched 
antagonists—at a period, moreover, laud it as we may, 
when personal influence had far more weight than now— 
remained for years undecided, and came to a close. only 
with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. 
The mode of his death, too, affects the mind differently, 
in our day, from what it did a century and a half ago. 
It was a death that blasted with strange horror the humble 
name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem al¬ 
most a religious act to drive the plough over the little area 


4 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


of his habitation, and obliterate his place and memory 
from among men. 

Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the 
crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that 
terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other 
morals, that the influential classes, and those who take 
upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully 
liable to all the passionate error that has ever character¬ 
ized the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen, 
—the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day,— 
stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest 
to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves 
miserably deceived. If any one part of their proceedings 
can be said to deserve less blame than another, it was 
the singular indiscrimination with which they persecuted, 
not merely the poor and aged, as in former judicial mas¬ 
sacres, but people of all ranks; their own equals, brethren, 
and wives. Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is 
not strange that a man of inconsiderable note, like Maule, 
should have trodden the martyr’s path to the hill of execu¬ 
tion almost unremarked in the throng of his fellow-suf¬ 
ferers. But, in after days, when the frenzy of that hideous 
epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly Colonel 
Pyncheon had joined in the genferal cry, to purge the land 
from witchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered, that there 
was an individious acrimony in the zeal with which he had 
sought the condemnation of Matthew Maule. It was well 
known that the victim had recognized the bitterness of 
personal enmity in his persecutor’s conduct towards him, 
and that he declared himself hunted to death for his spoil. 
At the moment of execution—with the halter about his 
neck, and while Colonel Pyncheon sat on horseback, 
grimly gazing at the scene—Maule had addressed him 
from the scaffold, and uttered a prophecy of which his- 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


5 


tory, as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the very 
words. “God,” said the dying man, pointing his finger, 
with a ghastly look, at the undismayed countenance of his 
enemy,—“God will give him blood to drink!” 

After the reputed wizard’s death, his humble home¬ 
stead had fallen an easy spoil into Colonel Pyncheon’s 
grasp. When it was understood, however, that the Colo¬ 
nel intended to erect a family mansion—spacious, pon- 
perously framed of oaken timber, and calculated to en¬ 
dure for many generations of his posterity—over the spot 
first covered by the log-built hut of Matthew Maule, 
there was much shaking of the head among the village 
gossips. Without absolutely expressing a doubt whether 
the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience and 
integrity throughout the proceedings which have been 
sketched, they, nevertheless, hinted that he was about to 
build his house over an unquiet grave. His home would 
include the home of the dead and buried wizard, and would 
thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind of privilege to 
haunt its new apartments, and the chambers into which 
future bridegrooms were to lead their brides, and where 
children of the Pyncheon blood were to be born. The 
terror and ugliness of Maule’s crime, and the wretchedness 
of his punishment, would darken the freshly plastered 
walls, and infect them early with the scent of an old and 
melancholy house. Why, then,—while so much of the 
soil around him was bestrewn with the virgin forest- 
leaves,—why should Colonel Pyncheon prefer a site that 
had already been accurst? 

But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man 
to be turned aside from his well-considered scheme, either 
by dread of the wizard’s ghost, or by flimsy sentimentali¬ 
ties of any kind, however specious. Had he been told of 
a bad air, it might have moved him somewhat; but he 


6 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


was ready to encounter an evil spirit on his own ground. 
Endowed with common-sense, as massive and hard as 
blocks of granite, fastened together by stern rigidity 
of purpose, as with iron clamps, he followed out his 
original design, probably without so much as imagining 
an objection to it. On the score of delicacy, or any scru¬ 
pulousness which a finer sensibility might have taught 
him, the Colonel, like most of his breed and generation, was 
impenetrable. He, therefore, dug his cellar, and laid the 
deep foundations of his mansion, on the square of earth 
whence Matthew Maule, forty years before, had first 
swept away the fallen leaves. It was a curious, and, as 
some people thought, an ominous fact, that, very soon 
after the workmen began their operations, the spring of 
water, above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousness of 
its pristine quality. Whether its sources were disturbed 
by the depth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler cause 
might lurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water of 
Maule’s Well, as it continued to be called, grew hard and 
brackish. Even such we find it now; and any old woman 
of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of 
intestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there. 

The reader may deem it singular that the head car¬ 
penter of the new edifice was rib other than the son of the 
very man from whose dead gripe the property of the soil 
had been wrested. Not improbably he was the best work¬ 
man of his time; or, perhaps, the Colonel thought it ex¬ 
pedient, or was impelled by some better feeling, thus 
openly to cast aside all animosity against the race of his 
fallen antagonist. Nor was it out of keeping with the 
general coarseness and matter-of-fact character of the age, 
that the son should be willing to earn an honest penny, or, 
rather, a weighty amount of sterling pounds, from the 
purse of his father’s deadly enemy. At all events, Thomas 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


7 


Maule became the architect of the House of the Seven 
Gables, and performed his duty so faithfully that the tim¬ 
ber framework fastened by his hands still holds together. 

Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it stands 
in the writer’s recollection,—for it has been an object of 
curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of 
the best and stateliest architecture of a long-past epoch, 
and as the scene of events more full of human interest, 
perhaps, than those of a gray feudal castle,—familiar as it 
stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more 
difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first 
caught the sunshine. The impression of its actual state, 
at this distance of a hundred and sixty years, darkens in¬ 
evitably through the picture which we would fain give of 
its appearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate 
bade all the town to be his guests. A ceremony of con¬ 
secration, festive as well as religious, was now to be per¬ 
formed. A prayer and discourse from the Rev. Mr. Hig- 
ginson, and the outpouring of a psalm from the general 
throat of the community, was to be made acceptable to 
the grosser sense by ale, cider, wine, and brandy, in copi¬ 
ous effusion, and, as some authorities aver, by an ox, 
roasted whole, or at least, by the weight and substance 
of an ox, in more manageable joints and sirloins. The 
carcass of a deer, shot within twenty miles, had supplied 
material for the vast circumference of a pasty. A cod¬ 
fish of sixty pounds, caught in the bay, had been dissolved 
into the rich liquid of a chowder. The chimney of the 
new house, in short, belching forth its kitchen-smoke, im¬ 
pregnated the whole air with the scent of meats, fowls, and 
fishes, spicily concocted with odoriferous herbs, and onions 
in abundance. The mere smell of such festivity, making 
its way to everybody’s nostrils, was at once an invitation 
and an appetite. 


8 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Maule’s Lane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now more 
decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, 
as with a congregation on its way to church. All, as they 
approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice, which 
was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations 
of mankind. There it rose, a little withdrawn from the 
line of the street, but in pride, not modesty. Its whole 
visible exterior was ornamented with quaint figures, con¬ 
ceived in the grotesqueness of a Gothic fancy, and drawn 
or stamped in the glittering plaster, composed of lime, 
pebbles, and bits of glass, with which the woodwork of 
the walls was overspread. On every side the seven gables 
pointed sharply towards the sky, and presented the aspect 
of a whole sisterhood of edifices, breathing through the 
spiracles of one great chimney. The many lattices, with 
their small, diamond-shaped panes, admitted the sun¬ 
light into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the sec¬ 
ond story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring 
beneath the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom 
into the lower rooms. Carved globes of wood were affixed 
under the jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beau¬ 
tified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular portion 
of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put 
up that very morning, andNm which the sun was still 
marking the passage of the first bright hour in a history 
that was not destined to be all so bright. All around 
were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves 
of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth, on 
which the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the 
impression of strangeness and novelty proper to a house 
that had yet its place to make among men’s daily interests. 

The principal entrance, which had almost the breadth 
of a church-door, was in the angle between the two front 
gables, and was covered by an open porch, with benches 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


9 


beneath its shelter. Under this arched door-way, scrap¬ 
ing their feet on the unworn threshold, now trod the clergy¬ 
men, the elders, the magistrates, the deacons, and what¬ 
ever of aristocracy there was in town or country. Thither, 
too, thronged the plebeian classes as freely as their betters, 
and in larger number. Just within the entrance, however, 
stood two serving-men, pointing some of the guests to the 
neighborhood of the kitchen, and ushering others into the 
statelier rooms,—hospitable alike to all, but still with a 
scrutinizing regard to the high or low degree of each. Vel¬ 
vet garments, somber but rich, stiffly plaited ruffs and 
bands, embroidered gloves, venerable beards, the mien 
and countenance of authority, made it easy to distinguish 
the gentlemen of worship, at that period, from the trades¬ 
man, with his plodding air, or the laborer, in his leathern 
jerkin, stealing awe-stricken into the house which he had 
perhaps helped to build. 

One inauspicious circumstance there was, which awak¬ 
ened a hardly concealed displeasure in the breasts of a few 
of the more punctilious visitors. The founder of this 
stately mansion—a gentleman noted for the square and 
ponderous courtesy of his demeanor—ought surely to 
have stood in his own hall, and to have offered the first 
welcome to so many eminent personages as here presented 
themselves in honor of his solemn festival. He was as 
yet invisible; the most favored of the guests had not beheld 
him. This sluggishness on Colonel Pyncheon’s part be¬ 
came still more unaccountable, when the second dignitary 
of the province made his appearance, and found no more 
ceremonious a reception. The lieutenant-governor, al¬ 
though his visit was one of the anticipated glories of the 
day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted his lady 
from her side-saddle, and crossed the Coloners threshold, 
without other greeting than that of the principal domestic. 


10 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


This person—a gray-headed man, of quiet and most 
respectful deportment—found it necessary to explain that 
his master still remained in his study, or private apart¬ 
ment; on entering which, an hour before, he had expressed 
a wish on no account to be disturbed. 

“Do you not see, fellow,” said the high-sheriff of the 
county, taking the servant aside, “that this is no less a 
man than the lieutenant-governor? Summon Colonel 
Pyncheon at once! I know that he received letters from 
England this morning; and, in the perusal and considera¬ 
tion of them, an hour may have passed away without his 
noticing it. But he will be ill-pleased, I judge, if you 
suffer him to neglect the courtesy done to one of our chief 
rulers, and who may be said to represent King William, in 
the absence of the governor himself. Call your master 
instantly! ” 

, “Nay, please your worship,” answered the man, in 
much perplexity, but with a backwardness that strikingly 
indicated the hard and severe character of Colonel Pyn- 
cheon’s domestic rule; “my master’s orders were exceed¬ 
ing strict; and, as your worship knows, he permits of no 
discretion in the obedience of those who owe him service. 
Let who list open yonder door; I dare not, though the gov¬ 
ernor’s own voice should bid nie do it!” 

“Pooh, pooh, master high-sheriff!” cried the lieutenant- 
governor, who had overheard the foregoing discussion, 
and felt himself high enough in station to play a little with 
his dignity. “I will take the matter into my own hands. 
It is time that the good Colonel came forth to greet his 
friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a 
sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme delibera¬ 
tion which cask it were best to broach in honor of the day! 
But since he is so much behindhand, I will give him a re¬ 
membrancer myself! ” 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


11 


Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous riding- 
boots as might of itself have been audible in the remotest 
of the seven gables, he advanced to the door, which the 
servant pointed out, and made its new panels reecho with 
a loud, free knock. Then, looking round, with a smile, to 
the spectators, he awaited a response. As none came, 
however, he knocked again, but with the same unsatisfac¬ 
tory result as at first. And now, being a trifle choleric in 
his temperament, the ' lieutenant-governor uplifted the 
heavy hilt of his sword, wherewith he so beat and banged 
upon the door, that, as some of the by-standers whispered, 
the racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as it 
might, it seemed to produce no awakening effect on Colo¬ 
nel Pyncheon. When the sound subsided, the silence 
through the house was deep, dreary, and oppressive, not¬ 
withstanding that the tongues of many of the guests had 
already been loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of 
wine or spirits. 

^ “Strange, forsooth!—very strange!” cried the lieutenant- 
governor, whose smile was changed to a frown. “But 
seeing that our host sets us the good example of forgetting 
ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside, and make free 
to intrude on his privacy!” 

He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was 
flung wide open by a sudden gust of wind that passed, as 
with a loud sigh, from the outermost portal through all 
the passages and apartments of the new house. It rustled 
the silken garments of the ladies, and waved the long 
curls of the gentlemen’s wigs, and shook the window-hang¬ 
ings and the curtains of the bedchambers; causing every¬ 
where a singular stir, which yet was more like a hush. 
A shadow of awe and half-fearful anticipation—nobody 
knew wherefore, nor of what—had all at once fallen over 
the company. 



12 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


They thronged, however, to the now open door, pressing 
the lieutenant-governor, in the eagerness of their curiosity, 
into the room in advance of them. At the first glimpse 
they beheld nothing extraordinary: a handsomely furnished 
room, of moderate size, somewhat darkened by curtains; 
books arranged on shelves; a large map on the wall, and 
likewise a portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, beneath which sat 
the original Colonel himself, in an oaken elbow-chair, with 
a pen in his hand. Letters, parchments, and blank sheets 
of paper were on the table before him. He appeared to 
gaze at the curious crowd, in front of which stood the 
lieutenant-governor; and there was a frown on his dark 
and massive countenance, as if sternly resentful of the 
boldness that had impelled them into his private retire¬ 
ment. 

A little boy—the Colonel’s grandchild, and the only 
human being that ever dared to be familiar with him— 
now made his way among the guests, and ran towards the 
seated figure; then pausing half-way, he began to shriek 
with terror. The company, tremulous as the leaves of a 
tree, when all are shaking together, drew nearer, and per¬ 
ceived that there was an unnatural distortion in the fixed¬ 
ness of Colonel Pyncheon’s stare; that there was blood 
on his ruff, and that his hoary beard was saturated with it. 
It was too late to give assistance. The iron-hearted Puri¬ 
tan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping and strong- 
willed man, was dead! Dead, in his new house! There is 
a tradition, only worth alluding to as lending a tinge of 
superstitious awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough with¬ 
out it, that a voice spoke loudly among the guests, the 
tones of which were like those of old Matthew Maule, the 
executed wizard,—“God hath given him blood to drink!” 

Thus early had that one guest,—the only guest who is 
certain, at one time or another, to find his way into every 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


13 


human dwelling,—thus early had Death stepped across 
the threshold of the House of the Seven Gables! 

Colonel Pyncheon’s sudden and mysterious end made a 
vast deal of noise in its day. There were many rumors, 
some of which have vaguely drifted down to the present 
time, how that appearances indicated violence; that there 
were the marks of fingers on his throat, and the print of a 
bloody hand on his plaited ruff; and that his peaked beard 
was dishevelled, as if it had been fiercely clutched and 
pulled. It was averred, likewise, that the lattice-window, 
near the Colonel’s chair, was open; and that, only a few 
minutes before the fatal occurrence, the figure of a man had 
been seen clambering over the garden-fence, in the rear 
of the house. But it were folly to lay any stress on stories 
of this kind, which are sure to spring up around such an 
event as that now related, and which, as in the present 
case, sometimes prolong themselves for ages afterwards, 
like the toadstools that indicate where the fallen and buried 
trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into the earth. 
For our own part, we allow them just as little credence as 
to that other fable of the skeleton hand which the lieu¬ 
tenant-governor was said to have seen at the Colonel’s 
throat, but which vanished away, as he advanced farther 
into the room. Certain it is, however, that there was a 
great consultation and dispute of doctors over the dead 
body. One—John Swinnerton by name—who appears to 
have been a man of eminence, upheld it, if we have rightly 
understood his terms of art, to be a case of apoplexy. His 
professional brethren, each for himself, adopted various 
hypotheses, more or less plausible, but all dressed out in 
a perplexing mystery of phrase, which, if it do not show 
a bewilderment of mind in these erudite physicians, cer¬ 
tainly causes bewilderment in the unlearned peruser of their 
opinions. The coroner’s jury sat upon the corpse, and, like 


14 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

sensible men, returned an unassailable verdict of “Sudden 
Death!” 

It is indeed difficult to imagine that there could have 
been a serious suspicion of murder, or the slightest grounds 
for implicating any particular individual as the perpetra¬ 
tor. The rank, wealth, and eminent character of the de¬ 
ceased must have insured the strictest scrutiny into every 
ambiguous circumstance. As none such is on record, it is 
safe to assume that none existed. Tradition,—which some¬ 
times brings down truth that history has let slip, but is 
oftener the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly 
spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers,— 
tradition is responsible for all contrary averments. In 
Colonel Pyncheon’s funeral sermon, which was printed, 
and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson enumerates, 
among the many felicities of his distinguished parishioner’s 
earthly career, the happy seasonableness of his death. 
His duties all performed,—the highest prosperity attained, 
—his race and future generations fixed on a stable basis, 
and with a stately roof to shelter them, for centuries to 
come,—what other upward step remained for this good 
man to take, save the final step from earth to the golden 
gate of heaven! The pious clergyman surely would not 
have uttered words like these had he in the least suspected 
that the Colonel had been thrust iftto the other world with 
the clutch of violence upon his throat. 

The family of Colonel Pyncheon, at the epoch of his 
death, seemed destined to as fortunate a permanence as 
can anywise consist with the inherent instability of human 
affairs. It might fairly be anticipated that the progress 
of time would rather increase and ripen their prosperity, 
than wear away and destroy it. For, not only had his son 
and heir come into immediate enjoyment of a rich estate, 
but there was a claim through an Indian deed, confirmed 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 15 

by a subsequent grant of the General Court, to a vast and 
as yet unexplored and unmeasured tract of Eastern lands. 
These possessions—for as such they might almost certainly 
be reckoned—comprised the greater part of what is now 
known as Waldo County, in the State of Maine, and were 
more extensive than many a dukedom, or even a reigning 
prince’s territory, on European soil. When the pathless 
forest that still covered this wild principality should give 
place—as it inevitably must, though perhaps not till 
ages hence—to the golden fertility of human culture, it 
would be the source of incalculable wealth to the Pyncheon 
blood. Had the Colonel survived only a few weeks longer, 
,it is probable that his great political influence, and power¬ 
ful connections at home and abroad, would have consum¬ 
mated all that was necessary to render the claim available. 
But, in spite of good Mr. Higginson’s congratulatory elo¬ 
quence, this appeared to be the one thing which Colonel 
Pyncheon, provident and sagacious as he w r as, had allowed 
to go at loose ends. So far as the prospective territory 
was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon. His son 
lacked not merely the father’s eminent position, but the 
talent and force of character to achieve it: he could, there¬ 
fore, effect nothing by dint of political interest; and the 
bare justice or legality of the claim was not so apparent, 
after the Colonel’s decease, as it had been pronounced in 
his lifetime. Some connecting link had slipped out of the 
evidence, and could not anywhere be found. 

Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not 
only then, but at various periods for nearly a hundred 
years afterwards, to obtain what they stubbornly persisted 
in deeming their right. But, in course of time, the terri¬ 
tory was partly re-granted to more favored individuals, 
and partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers. These 
last, if they ever heard of the Pyncheon title, would have 


jr 


16 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

laughed at the idea of any man’s asserting a right—on 
the strength of mouldy parchments, signed with the faded 
autographs of governors and legislators long dead and 
forgotten—to the lands which they or their fathers had 
wrested from the wild hand of nature by their own sturdy 
toil. This impalpable claim, therefore, resulted in nothing 
more solid than to cherish, from generation to generation, 
an absurd delusion of family importance, which all along 
characterized the Pyncheons. It caused the poorest mem¬ 
ber of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of nobility, 
and might yet come into the possession of princely wealth 
to support it. In the better specimens of the breed, this 
peculiarity threw an ideal grace over the hard material 
of human life, without stealing away any truly valuable 
quality. In the baser sort, its effect was to increase the 
liability to sluggishness and dependence, and induce the 
victim of a shadowy hope to remit all self-effort, while 
awaiting the realization of his dreams. Years and years 
after their claim had passed out of the public memory, 
the Pyncheons were accustomed to consult the Colonel’s 
ancient map, which had been projected while Waldo 
County was still an unbroken wilderness. Where the old 
land-surveyor had put down woods, lakes, and rivers, they 
marked out the cleared spaces, an^ dotted the villages and 
towns, and calculated the progressively increasing value 
of the territory, as if there were yet a prospect of its ul¬ 
timately forming a princedom for themselves. 

In almost every generation, nevertheless, there hap¬ 
pened to be some one descendant of the family gifted 
with a portion of thei hard, keen sense, and practical 
energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the orig¬ 
inal founder. His character, indeed, might be traced all 
the way down, as distinctly as if the Colonel himself, a 
little diluted, had been gifted with a sort of intermittent 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


17 


immortality on earth. At two or three epochs, when the 
fortunes of the family were low, this representative of 
hereditary qualities had made his appearance, and caused 
the traditionary gossips of the town to whisper among 
themselves, “Here is the old Pyncheon come again! Now 
the Seven Gables will be new-shingled!” From father 
to son, they clung to the ancestral house with singular 
tenacity of home attachment. For various reasons, how¬ 
ever, and from impressions often too vaguely founded to 
be put on paper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, 
if not most, of the successive proprietors of this estate were 
troubled with doubts as to their moral rights to hold it. 
Of their legal tenure there could be no question; but old 
Matthew Maule, it is to be feared, trode downward from 
his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy footstep, 
all the way, on the conscience of a Pyncheon. If so, we 
are left to dispose of the awful query, whether each inheri¬ 
tor of the property—conscious of wrong, and failing to 
rectify it—did not commit anew the great guilt of his 
ancestor, and incur all its original responsibilities. And 
supposing such to be the case, would it not be a far truer 
mode of expression to say of the Pyncheon family, that 
they inherited a great misfortune, than the reverse? 

We have already hinted that it is not our purpose to 
trace down the history of the Pyncheon family, in its un¬ 
broken connection with the House of the Seven Gables; nor 
to show, as in a magic picture, how the rustiness and in¬ 
firmity of age gathered over the venerable house itself. 
As regards its interior life, a large, dim looking-glass used 
to hang in one of the rooms, and was fabled to contain 
within its depths all the shapes that had ever been re¬ 
flected there,—the old Colonel himself, and his many 
descendants, some in the garb of antique babyhood, and 
others in the bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, 


18 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


or saddened with the wrinkles of frosty age. Had we the 
secret of that mirror, we would gladly sit down before it, 
and transfer its revelations to our page. But there was a 
story, for which it is difficult to conceive any foundation, 
that the posterity of Matthew Maule had some connec¬ 
tion with the mystery of the looking-glass, and that, by 
what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric process, 
they could make its inner region all alive with the departed 
Pyncheons; not as they had shown themselves to the world 
nor in their better and happier hours, but as doing over 
again some deed of sin, or in the crisis of life’s bitterest 
sorrow. The popular imagination, indeed, long kept 
itself busy with the affair of the old Puritan Pyncheon 
and the wizard Maule; the curse, which the latter flung 
from his scaffold, was remembered, with the very impor¬ 
tant addition, that it had become a part of the Pyncheon 
inheritance. If one of the family did but gurgle in his 
throat, a bystander would be likely enough to whisper, 
between jest and earnest, “He has Maule’s blood to 
drink!” The sudden death of a Pyncheon, about a hun¬ 
dred years ago, with circumstances very similar to what 
have been related of the Colonel’s exit, was held as giving 
additional probability to the received opinion on this 
topic. It was considered, moreover, an ugly and ominous 
circumstance, that Colonel Pyncheon’s picture—in obe¬ 
dience, it was said, to a provision of his will—remained 
affixed to the wall of the room in which he died. Those 
stern, immitigable features seemed to symbolize an evil 
influence, and so darkly to mingle the shadow of their 
presence with the sunshine of the passing hour, that no 
good thoughts or purposes could ever spring up and blos¬ 
som there. To the thoughtful mind there will be no 
tinge of superstition in what we figuratively express, by 
affirming that the ghost of a dead progenitor—perhaps as 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 19 

a portion of his own punishment—is often doomed to be¬ 
come the Evil Genius of his family. 

The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better part 
of two centuries, with 'perhaps less of outward vicissitude 
than has attended most other New England families dur¬ 
ing the same period of time. Possessing very distinctive 
traits of their own, they nevertheless took the general 
characteristics of the little community in which they 
dwelt; a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, 
and home-loving inhabitants, as well as for the somewhat 
confined scope of its sympathies; but in which, be it said, 
there are odder individuals, and, now and then, stranger 
occurrences, than one meets with almost anywhere else. 
During the Revolution, the Pyncheon of that epoch, 
adopting the royal side, became a refugee; but repented, 
and made his reappearance, just at the point of time to 
preserve the House of the Seven Gables from confiscation. 
For the last seventy years the most noted event in the 
Pyncheon annals had been likewise the heaviest calamity 
that ever befell the race; no less than the violent death— 
for so it was adjudged—of one member of the family by 
the criminal act of another. Certain circumstances at¬ 
tending this fatal occurrence had brought the deed ir¬ 
resistibly home to a nephew of the deceased Pyncheon. 
The young man was tried and convicted of the crime; 
but either the circumstantial nature of the evidence, and 
possibly some lurking doubt in the breast of the executive, 
or, lastly,—an argument of greater weight in a republic 
than it could have been under a monarchy,—the high 
respectability and political influence of the criminal’s con¬ 
nections, had availed to mitigate his doom from death 
to perpetual imprisonment. This sad affair had chanced 
about thirty years before the action of our story com¬ 
mences. Latterly, there were rumors (which few believed, 




20 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

and only one or two felt greatly interested in) that this 
long-buried man was likely, for some reason or other, to 
be summoned forth from his living tomb. 

It is essential to say a few words respecting the victim 
of this now almost forgotten murder. He was an old 
bachelor, and possessed of great wealth, in addition to the 
house and real estate which constituted what remained 
of the ancient Pyncheon property. Being of an eccentric 
and melancholy turn of mind, and greatly given to rum¬ 
maging old records and hearkening to old traditions, he 
had brought himself, it is averred, to the conclusion that 
Matthew Maule, the wizard, had been foully wronged out 
of his homestead, if not out of his life. Such being the 
case, and he, the old bachelor, in possession of the ill- 
gotten spoil,—with the black stain of blood sunken deep 
into it, and still to be scented by conscientious nostrils,— 
the question occurred, whether it were not imperative 
upon him, even at this late hour, to make restitution to 
Maule’s posterity. To a man living so much in the past, 
and so little in the present, as the secluded and antiqua¬ 
rian old bachelor, a century and a half seemed not so vast 
a period as to obviate the propriety of substituting right 
for wrong. It was the belief of those who knew him best, 
that he would positively haVe taken the very singular 
step of giving up the House of the Seven Gables to the 
representative of Matthew Maule, but for the unspeak¬ 
able tumult which a suspicion of the old gentleman’s 
project awakened among his Pyncheon relatives. Their 
exertions had the effect of suspending his purpose; but it 
was feared that he would perform, after death, by the 
operation of his last will, what he had so hardly been pre¬ 
vented from doing in his proper lifetime. But there is no 
one thing which men so rarely do, whatever the provoca¬ 
tion or inducement, as to bequeath patrimonial property 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


21 


away from their own blood. They may love other indi¬ 
viduals far better than their relatives,—they may even 
cherish dislike, or positive hatred, to the latter; but yet, 
in view of death, the strong prejudice of propinquity re¬ 
vives, and impels the testator to send down his estate in 
the line marked out by custom so immemorial that it 
looks like nature. In all the Pyncheons, this feeling had 
the energy of disease. It was too powerful for the con¬ 
scientious scruples of the old bachelor; at whose death, 
accordingly, the mansion-house, together with most of 
his other riches, passed into the possession of his next legal 
representative. 

This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young 
man who had been convicted of the uncle’s murder. The 
new heir, up to the period of his accession, was reckoned 
rather a dissipated youth, but had at once reformed, and 
made himself an exceedingly respectable member of so¬ 
ciety. In fact, he showed more of the Pyncheon quality, 
and had won higher eminence in the world than any of 
his race since the time of the original Puritan. Applying 
himself in earlier manhood to the study of the law, and 
having a natural tendency towards office, he had attained, 
many years ago, to a judicial situation in some inferior 
court, which gave him for life the very desirable and im¬ 
posing title of judge. Later, he had engaged in politics, 
and served a part of two terms in Congress, besides mak¬ 
ing a considerable figure in both branches of the State 
legislature. Judge Pyncheon was unquestionably an honor to 
his race. He had built himself a country-seat within a few 
miles of his native town, and there' spent such portions 
of his time as could be spared from public sendee in the 
display of every grace and virtue—as a newspaper phrased 
it, on the eve of an election—befitting the Christian, the 
good citizen, the horticulturist, and the gentleman. 




22 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


There were few of the Pyncheons left to sun themselves 
in the glow of the Judge’s prosperity. In respect to nat¬ 
ural increase, the breed had not thriven; it appeared 
rather to be dying out. The only members of the family 
known to be extant were, first, the Judge himself, and a 
single surviving son, who was now traveling in Europe; 
next, the thirty years’ prisoner, already alluded to, and a 
sister of the latter, who occupied, in an extremely retired 
manner, the House of the Seven Gables, in which she 
had a life-estate by the will of the old bachelor. She was 
understood to be wretchedly poor, and seemed to make it 
her choice to remain so; inasmuch as her affluent cousin, 
the Judge, had repeatedly offered her all the comforts of 
life, either in the old mansion or his own modern residence. 
The last and youngest Pyncheon was a little country-girl 
of seventeen, the daughter of another of the Judge’s 
cousins, who had married a young woman of no family or 
property, and died early and in poor circumstances. His 
widow had recently taken another husband. 

As for Matthew Maule’s posterity, it was supposed now 
to be extinct. For a very long period after the witchcraft 
delusion, however, the Maules had continued to inhabit 
the town where their progenitor had suffered so unjust a 
death. To all appearance, they"were a quiet, honest, well- 
meaning race of people, cherishing no malice against in¬ 
dividuals or the public for the wrong which had been done 
them; or if, at their own fireside, they transmitted, from 
father to child, any hostile recollection of the wizard’s 
fate and their lost patrimony, it was never acted upon, nor 
openly expressed. Nor would it have been singular had 
they ceased to remember that the House of the Seven 
Gables was resting its heavy framework on a foundation 
that was rightfully their own. There is something so 
massive, stable, and almost irresistibly imposing in the 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


23 


exterior presentment of established rank and great pos¬ 
sessions, that their very existence seems to give them a 
right to exist; at least, so excellent a counterfeit of right, 
that few poor and humble men have moral force enough 
to question it, even in their secret minds. Such is the case 
now, after so many ancient prejudices have been over¬ 
thrown; and it was far more so in ante-Revolutionary days, 
when the aristocracy could Venture to be proud, and the 
low were content to be abased. Thus the Maules, at all 
events, kept their resentments within their own breasts. 
They were generally poverty-stricken; always plebeian 
and obscure; working with unsuccessful diligence at handi¬ 
crafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea, as 
sailors before the mast; living here and there about the 
town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the alms¬ 
house as the natural home of their old age. At last, after 
creeping as it were, for such a length of time, along the ut¬ 
most verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had 
taken that downright plunge, which, sooner or later, is 
the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian. 
For thirty years past, neither town-record, nor grave¬ 
stone, nor the directory, nor the knowledge or memory of 
man, bore any trace of Matthew Maule’s descendants. 
His blood might possibly exist elsewhere; here, where its 
lowly current could be traced so far back, it had ceased 
to keep an onward course. 

So long as any of the race were to be found, they had 
been marked out from other men—not strikingly, nor as 
with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt rather 
than spoken of—by an hereditary character of reserve. 
Their companions, or those who endeavored to become 
such, grew conscious of a circle round about the Maules, 
within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an ex¬ 
terior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was 


24 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


a 


impossible for any man to step. It was this indefinable 
peculiarity, perhaps, that, by insulating them from human 
aid, kept them always so unfortunate in life. It certainly 
operated to prolong in their case, and to confirm to them 
as their only inheritance, those feelings of repugnance 
and superstitious terror with which the people of the town, 
even after awakening from their frenzy, continued to re¬ 
gard the memory of the reputed witches. The mantle, 
or rather the ragged cloak, of old Matthew Maule, had 
fallen upon his children. They were half believed to in¬ 
herit mysterious attributes; the family eye was said to 
possess strange power. Among other good-for-nothing 
properties and privileges, one was especially assigned them, 
—that of exercising an influence over people’s dreams. The 
Pyncheons, if all stories were true, haughtily as they bore 
themselves in the noonday streets of their native town, 
were no better than bond-servants to these plebeian 
Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy commonwealth of 
sleep. Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavor to 
reduce these alleged necromancies within a system, instead 
of rejecting them as altogether fabulous. 

A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven- 
gabled mansion in its more" recent aspect, will bring this 
preliminary chapter to a close. The street in which it 
upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to be a fash¬ 
ionable quarter of the town; so that, though the old edifice 
was surrounded by habitations of modern date, they were 
mostly small, built entirely of wood, and typical of the 
most plodding uniformity of common life. Doubtless, how¬ 
ever, the whole story of human existence may be latent 
in each of them, but with no picturesqueness, externally, 
that can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it 
there. But as for the old structure of our story, its white- 
oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 25 

and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed 
to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. 
So much of mankind’s varied experience had passed there, 
—so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed, 
—that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture 
of a heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with 
a life of its own, and full of rich and somber reminiscences. 

The deep projection of the second story gave the house 
such a meditative look, that you could not pass it without 
the idea that it had secrets to keep, and an eventful history 
to moralize upon. In front, just on the edge of the unpaved 
sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon Elm, which, in reference to 
such trees as one usually meets with, might well be termed 
gigantic. It had been planted by a great-grandson of the 
first Pyncheon, and, though now fourscore years of age, 
or perhaps nearer a hundred, was still in its strong and 
broad maturity, throwing its shadow from side to side of 
the street, overtopping the seven gables, and sweeping 
the whole black roof with its pendent foliage. It gave 
beauty to the old edifice, and seemed to make it a part of 
nature. The street having been widened about forty years 
ago, the front gable was now precisely on a line with it. 
On either side extended a ruinous wooden fence of open 
lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy yard, 
and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormous 
fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggera¬ 
tion to say, two or three feet long. Behind the house there 
appeared to be a garden, which undoubtedly had once 
been extensive, but was now infringed upon by other 
enclosures, or shut in by habitations and outbuildings 
that stood on another street. It would be an omission, 
trifling, indeed, but unpardonable, were we to forget the 
green moss that had long since gathered over the projec¬ 
tions of the windows, and on the slopes of the roof; nor 


26 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


must we fail to direct the reader’s eye to a crop, not of 
weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were growing aloft in the 
air, not a great way from the chimney, in the nook between 
two of the gables. They were called Alice’s Posies. The 
tradition was, that a certain Alice Pyncheon had flung 
up the seeds, in sport, and that the dust of the street and 
the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind of soil for 
them, out of which they grew, when Alice had long been 
in her grave. However the flowers might have come there, 
it was both sad and sweet to observe how Nature adopted 
to herself this desolate, decaying, gusty, rusty old house 
of the Pyncheon family; and how the ever-returning sum¬ 
mer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty, and 
grew melancholy in the effort. 

There is one other feature, very essential to be noticed, 
but which, we greatly fear, may damage any picturesque 
and romantic impression which we have been willing to 
throw over our sketch of this respectable edifice. In the 
front gable, under the impending brow of the second story, 
and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, divided 
horizontally in the midst, and with a window for its upper 
segment, such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat 
ancient date. This same shop-door had been a subject 
of no slight mortification to the present occupant of the 
august Pyncheon House, as well as to some of her prede¬ 
cessors. The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle; 
but, since the reader must needs be let into the secret, he 
will please to understand, that, about a century ago, the 
head of the Pyncheons found himself involved in serious 
financial difficulties. The fellow (gentleman, as he styled 
himself) can hardly have been other than a spurious in¬ 
terloper; for, instead of seeking office from the king or the 
royal governor, or urging his hereditary claim to Eastern 
lands, he bethought himself of no better avenue to wealth 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 


27 


than by cutting a shop-door through the side of his an¬ 
cestral residence. It was the custom of the time, indeed, 
for merchants to store their goods and transact business 
in their own dwellings. But there was something pitifully 
small in this old Pyncheon’s mode of setting about his com¬ 
mercial operations; it was whispered, that, with his own 
hands, all beruffled as they were, he used to give change 
for a shilling, and would turn a half-penny twice over, to 
make sure that it was a good one. Beyond all question, 
he had the blood of a petty huckster in his veins, through 
whatever channel it may have found its way there. 

Immediately on his death, the shop-door had been 
locked, bolted, and barred, and, down to the period of our 
story, had probably never once been opened. The old 
Counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the little shop re¬ 
mained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, 
that the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet 
coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned 
back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks 
of the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, 
or poring over the dingy pages of his day-book. From the 
look of unutterable woe upon his face, it appeared to be his 
doom to spend eternity in a vain effort to make his accounts 
balance. 

And now—in a very humble way, as will be seen—we 
proceed to open our narrative. 



Miss Hepzibah’s Shop 





















II 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW 

It still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss Hep- 
zibah Pyncheon—we will not say awoke, it being doubtful 
whether the poor lady had so much as closed her eyes 
during the brief night of midsummer—but, at all events, 
arose from her solitary pillow, and began what it would 
te mockery to term the adornment of her person. Far 
from us be the indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, 
at a maiden lady’s toilet! Our story must therefore await 
Miss Hepzibah at the threshold of her chamber; only pre¬ 
suming, meanwhile, to note some of the heavy sighs that 
labored from her bosom, with little restraint as to their 
lugubrious depth and volume of sound, inasmuch as they 
could be audible to nobody save a disembodied listener 
like ourself. The Old Maid was alone in the old house. 
Alone, except for a certain respectable and orderly young 
man, an artist in the daguerreotype line, who, for about 
three months back, had been a lodger in a remote gable,— 
quite a house by itself, indeed,—with locks, bolts, and 
oaken bars on all the intervening doors. Inaudible, con¬ 
sequently, were poor Miss Hepzibah’s gusty sighs. In¬ 
audible the creaking joints of her stiffened knees, as she 
knelt down by the bedside. And inaudible, too, by mortal 
ear, but heard with all-comprehending love and pity in 
the farthest heaven, that almost agony of prayer—now 
whispered, now a groan, now a struggling silence—where- 

29 


30 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


with she besought the Divine assistance through the day! 
Evidently, this is to be a day of more than ordinary trial 
to Miss Hepzibah, who, for above a quarter of a century 
gone by, has dwelt in strict seclusion, taking no part in 
the business of life, and just as little in its intercourse 
and pleasures. Not with such fervor prays the torpid 
recluse, looking forward to the cold, sunless, stagnant 
calm of a day that is to be like innumerable yesterdays! 

The maiden lady’s devotions are concluded. Will she 
now issue forth over the threshold of our story? Not yet, 
by many moments. First, every drawer in the tall, old- 
fashioned bureau is to be opened, with difficulty, and 
with a succession of spasmodic jerks; then, all must close 
again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rust¬ 
ling of stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward foot¬ 
steps to and fro across the chamber. We suspect Miss 
Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a step upward into a chair, 
in order to give heedful regard to her appearance on all 
sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet- 
glass, that hangs above her table. Truly! well, indeed! 
who would have thought it! Is all this precious time to 
be lavished on the matutinal repair and beautifying of 
an elderly person, who never goes abroad, whom nobody 
ever visits, and from whom, tvhen she shall have done her 
utmost, it were the best charity to turn one’s eyes another 
way? 

Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other 
pause; for it is given to the sole sentiment, or, we might 
better say,—heightened and rendered intense, as it has 
been, by sorrow and seclusion,—to the strong passion of 
her life. We heard the turning of a key in a small lock; 
she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is 
probably looking at a certain miniature, done in Mal- 
bone’s most perfect style, and representing a face worthy 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW 


31 


of no less delicate a pencil. It was once our good fortune 
to see this picture. It is a likeness of a young man, in a 
silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft richness of 
which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie, with 
its full, tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indi¬ 
cate not so much capacity of thought, as gentle and vo¬ 
luptuous emotion. Of the possessor of such features we 
shall have a right to ask nothing, except that he would 
take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in 
it. Can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah? 
No; she never had a lover—poor thing, how could she?— 
nor ever knew, by her own experience, what love tech¬ 
nically means. And yet, her undying faith and trust, her 
fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness toward 
the original of that miniature, have been the only sub¬ 
stance for her heart to feed upon. 

She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is stand¬ 
ing again before the toilet-glass. There are tears to be 
wiped off. A few more footsteps to and fro; and here, at 
last,—with another pitiful sigh, like a gust of chill, damp 
wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of which has 
accidentally been set ajar,—here comes Miss Hepzibah 
Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky, time-dark¬ 
ened passage; a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long 
and shrunken waist, feeling her way towards the stairs 
like a near-sighted person, as in truth she is. 

The sun, meanwhile, if hot already above the horizon, 
was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge. A few 
clouds, floating high upward, caught some of the earliest 
light, and threw down its golden gleam on the windows 
of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the House of 
the Seven Gables, which—many such sunrises as it had 
witnessed—looked cheerfully at the present one. The 
reflected radiance served to show, pretty distinctly, the 


32 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


aspect and arrangement of the room which Hepzibah en¬ 
tered, after descending the stairs. It was a ‘low-studded 
room, with a beam across the ceiling, paneled with dark 
wood, and having a large chimney-piece, set round with 
pictured tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board, 
through which ran the funnel of a modern stove. There 
was a carpet on the floor, originally of rich texture, but so 
worn and faded in these latter years that its once brilliant 
figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable hue. 
In the way of furniture, there were two tables: one, con¬ 
structed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many 
feet as a centipede; the other, most delicately wrought, 
with four long and slender legs, so apparently frail that it 
was almost incredible what a length of time the ancient 
tea-table had stood upon them. Half a dozen chairs 
stood about the room, straight and stiff, and so ingen¬ 
iously contrived for the discomfort of the human person 
that they were irksome even to sight, and conveyed the 
ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they 
could have been adapted. One exception there was, how¬ 
ever, in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back, 
carved elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its 
arms, that made up, by its spacious comprehensiveness, 
for the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound 
in a modern chair. 

As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect but 
two, if such they may be called. One was a map of the 
Pyncheon territory at the eastward, not engraved, but 
the handiwork of some skilful old draughtsman, and gro¬ 
tesquely illuminated with pictures of Indians and wild 
beasts, among which was seen a lion; the natural history 
of the region being as little known as its geography, which 
was put down most fantastically awry. The other adorn¬ 
ment was the portrait of old Colonel Pyncheon, at two- 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW 


33 


thirds length, representing the stern features of a Puri¬ 
tanic-looking personage, in a skull-cap, with a laced band 
and a grizzly beard; holding a Bible with one hand, and 
in the other uplifting an iron sworcf-hilt. The latter ob¬ 
ject, being more successfully depicted by the artist, stood 
out in far greater prominence than the sacred volume. 
Face to face with this picture, on entering the apartment, 
Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came to a pause; regarding it 
with a singular scowl, a strange contortion of the brow, 
which, by people who did not know her, would probably 
have been interpreted as an expression of bitter anger and 
ill-will. But it was no such thing. She, in fact, felt a 
reverence for the pictured visage, of which only a far- 
descended and time-stricken virgin could be susceptible; 
and this forbidding scowl was the innocent result of her 
near-sightedness, and an effort so to concentrate her 
powers of vision as to substitute a firm outline of the ob¬ 
ject instead of a vague one. 

We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expres¬ 
sion of poor Hepzibah’s brow. Her scowl,—as the world, 
or such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse 
of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it,— 
her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in 
establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid; 
nor does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at her¬ 
self in a dim looking-glass, and perpetually encountering 
her own frown within its ghostly sphere, she had been led 
to interpret the expression almost as unjustly as the world 
did. “How miserably cross I look!” she must often have 
whispered to herself; and ultimately have fancied herself 
so, by a sense of inevitable doom. But her heart never 
frowned. It was naturally tender, sensitive, and full of 
little tremors and palpitations; all of which weaknesses it 
retained, while her visage was growing so perversely stem, 


34 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


and even fierce. Nor had Hepzibah ever any hardihood, 
except what came from the very warmest nook in her 
affections. 

All this time, however, we are loitering faint-heartedly 
on the threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an 
invincible reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah 
Pyncheon was about to do. 

It has already been observed, that, in the basement 
story of the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy 
ancestor, nearly a century ago, had fitted up a shop. 
Ever since the old gentleman retired from trade, and fell 
asleep under his coffin-lid, not only the shop-door, but the 
inner arrangements, had been suffered to remain un¬ 
changed; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep over 
the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair of 
scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed. It 
treasured itself up, too, in the half-open till, where there 
still lingered a base sixpence, worth neither more nor 
less than the hereditary pride which had here been put 
to shame. Such had been the state and condition of the 
little shop in old Hepzibah’s childhood, when she and her 
brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken pre¬ 
cincts. So it had remained, until within a few days past. 

But now, though the shop-window was still closely cur¬ 
tained from the public gaze^ a remarkable change had 
taken place in its interior. The rich and heavy festoons 
of cobweb, which it had cost a long ancestral succession of 
spiders their life’s labor to spin and weave, had been care¬ 
fully brushed away from the ceiling. The counter, 
shelves, and floor had all been scoured, and the latter was 
overstrewn with fresh blue sand. The brown scales, too, 
had evidently undergone rigid discipline, in an unavailing 
effort to rub off the rust, which, alas! had eaten through 
and through their substance. Neither was the little old 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW 


35 


shop any longer empty of merchantable goods. A curious 
eye, privileged to take an account of stock, and investi¬ 
gate behind the counter, would have discovered a barrel,— 
yea, two or three barrels and half ditto,—one containing 
flour, another apples, and a third, perhaps, Indian meal. 
There was likewise a square box of pine-wood, full of 
soap in bars; also, another of the same size, in which were 
tallow-candles, ten to the pound. A small stock of brown 
sugar, some white beans and split peas, and a few other 
commodities of low price, and such as are constantly in 
demand, made up the bulkier portion of the merchandise. 
It might have been taken for a ghostly or phantasmagoric 
reflection of the old shop-keeper Pyncheon’s shabbily 
provided shelves, save that some of the articles were of a 
description and outward form which could hardly have 
been known in his day. For instance, there was a glass 
pickle-jar, filled with fragments of Gibraltar rock; not, 
indeed, splinters of the veritable stone foundation of the 
famous fortress, but bits of delectable candy, neatly done 
up in white paper. Jim Crow, moreover, was seen exe¬ 
cuting his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread. A 
party of leaden dragoons were galloping along one of the 
shelves, in equipments and uniform of modern cut; and 
there were some sugar figures, with no strong resemblance 
to the humanity of any epoch, but less unsatisfactorily 
representing our own fashions than those of a hundred 
years ago. Another phenomenon, still more strikingly 
modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old 
times, would have been thought actually to borrow their 
instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tophet. 

In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it was 
incontrovertibly evident that somebody had taken the 
shop and fixtures of the long-retired and forgotten Mr. 
Pyncheon, and was about to renew the enterprise of that 


36 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

departed worthy, with a different set of customers. Who 
could this bold adventurer be? And, of all places in the 
world, why had he chosen the House of the Seven Gables 
as the scene of his commercial speculations? 

We return to the elderly maiden. She at length with¬ 
drew her eyes from the dark countenance of the Colonel's 
portrait, heaved a sigh,—indeed, her breast was a very 
cave of iEolus that morning,—and stept across the room 
on tiptoe, as is the customary gait of elderly women. Pass¬ 
ing through an intervening passage, she opened a door 
that communicated with the shop, just now so elaborately 
described. Owing to the projection of the upper story— 
and still more to the thick shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, 
which stood almost directly in front of the gable—the 
twilight, here, was still as much akin to night as morning. 
Another heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah! After a mo¬ 
ment's pause on the threshold, peering towards the window 
with her near-sighted scowl, as if frowning down some bit¬ 
ter enemy, she suddenly projected herself into the shop. 
The haste, and, as it were, the galvanic impulse of the 
movement, were really quite startling. 

Nervously—in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say— 
she began to busy herself in arranging some children's 
playthings, and other little wares, on the shelves and at 
the shop-window. In the aspect of this dark-arrayed, pale- 
faced, lady-like old figure theft was a deeply tragic char¬ 
acter that contrasted irreconcilably with the ludicrous 
pettiness of her employment. It seemed a queer anomaly, 
that so gaunt and dismal a personage should take a toy in 
hand; a miracle, that the toy did not vanish in her grasp; 
a miserably absurd idea, that she should go on perplexing 
her stiff and somber intellect with the question how to 
tempt little boys into her premises! Yet such is undoubt¬ 
edly her object. Now she places a gingerbread elephant 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW 


37 


against the window, but with so tremulous a touch that it 
tumbles upon the floor, with the dismemberment of three 
legs and its trunk; it has ceased to be an elephant, and has 
become a few bits of musty gingerbread. There, again, 
she has upset a tumbler of marbles, all of which roll differ¬ 
ent ways, and each individual marble, devil-directed, into 
the most difficult obscurity that it can find. Heaven help 
our poor old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludi¬ 
crous view of her position! As her rigid and rusty frame 
goes down upon its hands and knees, in quest of the ab¬ 
sconding marbles, we , positively feel so much the more 
inclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the very fact that 
we must needs turn aside and laugh at her. For here,— 
and if we fail to impress it suitably upon the reader, it is 
our own fault, not that of the theme,—here is one of the 
truest points of melancholy interest that occur in ordinary 
life. It was the final throe of what called itself old gen¬ 
tility. A lady—who • had fed herself from childhood with 
the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose 
religion it was that a lady’s hand soils itself irremediably 
by doing aught for bread—this born, lady, after sixty 
years of narrowing means, is fain to step down from her 
pedestal of imaginary rank. Poverty, treading closely 
at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her at last. 
She must earn her own food, or starve! And we have 
stolen upon Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently, 
at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be 
transformed into the plebeian woman. 

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves 
of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning- 
point. The tragedy is enacted with as continual a repeti¬ 
tion as that of a popular drama on a holiday; and, never¬ 
theless, is felt as deeply, perhaps, as when an hereditary 
noble sinks below his order. More deeply; since, with us, 


38 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


rank is the grosser substance of wealth and a splendid 
establishment, and has no spiritual existence after the 
death of these, but dies hopelessly along with them. And, 
therefore, since we have been unfortunate enough to intro¬ 
duce our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would 
entreat for a mood of due solemnity in the spectators of 
her fate. Let us behold, in poor Hepzibah, the imme¬ 
morial lady,—two hundred years old, on this side of the 
water, and thrice as many on the other,—with her antique 
portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records and traditions, 
and her claim, as joint heiress, to that princely territory 
at the eastward, no longer a wilderness, but a populous 
fertility,—born, too, in Pyncheon Street, under the Pyn- 
cheon Elm, and in the Pyncheon House, where she has 
spent all her days,—reduced now, in that very house, to 
be the hucksteress of a cent-shop. 

This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the 
only resource of women, in circumstances at all similar 
to those of our unfortunate recluse. With her near¬ 
sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once 
inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; 
although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some 
of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework. 
A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; 
and, at one time, she had begun a review of her early 
studies in the New England Primer, with a view to prepare 
herself for the office of instructress. But the love of chil¬ 
dren had never been quickened in Hepzibah’s heart, and 
was now torpid, if not extinct; she watched the little people 
of the neighborhood from her chamber-window, and 
doubted whether she could tolerate a more intimate ac¬ 
quaintance with them. Besides, in ouf day, the very ABC 
has become a science greatly too abstruse to be any longer 
taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter. A modern 


r. 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW 


39 


child could teach old Hepzibah more than old Hepzibah 
could teach the child. So—with many a cold, deep heart- 
quake at the idea of at last coming into sordid contact 
with the world, from which she had so long kept aloof, 
while every added day of seclusion had rolled another 
stone against the cavern-door of her hermitage—the poor 
thing bethought herself of the ancient shop-window, the 
rusty scales, and dusty till. She might have held back a 
little longer; but another circumstance, not yet hinted 
at, had somewhat hastened her decision. Her humble 
preparations, therefore, were duly made, and the enter¬ 
prise was now to be commenced. Nor was she entitled to 
complain of any remarkable singularity in her fate; for, 
in the town of her nativity, we might point to several little 
shops of a similar description, some of them in houses as 
ancient as that of the Seven Gables; and one or two, it 
may be, where a decayed gentlewoman stands behind the 
counter, as grim an image of family pride as Miss Hepzibah 
Pyncheon herself. 

It was overpoweringly ridiculous—we must honestly 
confess it—the deportment of the maiden lady while 
setting her shop in order for the public eye. She stole on 
tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if she conceived some 
bloody-minded villain to be watching behind the elm-tree, 
with intent to take her life. Stretching out her long, lank 
arm, she put a paper of pearl buttons, a jew’s-harp, or 
whatever the small article might be, in its destined place, 
and straightway vanished back into the dusk, as if the 
world need never hope for another glimpse of her. It might 
have been fancied, indeed, that she expected to minister 
to the wants of the community unseen, like a disembodied 
divinity or enchantress, holding forth her bargains to the 
reverential and awe-stricken purchaser in an invisible 
hand. But Hepzibah had no such flattering dream. She 


40 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


was well aware that she must ultimately come forward, 
and stand revealed in her proper individuality; but, like 
other sensitive persons she could not bear to be observed 
in the gradual process, and chose rather to flash forth on 
the world’s astonished gaze at once. 

The inevitable moment was not much longer to be 
delayed. The sunshine might now be seen stealing down 
the front of the opposite house, from the windows of which 
came a reflected gleam, struggling through the boughs of 
the elm-tree, and enlightening the interior of the shop more 
distinctly than heretofore. The town appeared to be wak¬ 
ing up. A baker’s cart had already rattled through the 
street, chasing away the latest vestige of night’s sanctity 
with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells. A milkman 
was distributing the contents of his cans from door to door; 
and the harsh peal of a fisherman’s conch-shell was heard 
far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped 
Hepzibah’s notice. The moment had arrived. To delay 
longer would be only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing 
remained, except to take down the bar from the shop- 
door, leaving the entrance free—more than free—welcome, 
as if all were household friends—to every passer-by, whose 
eyes might be attracted by the commodities at the window. 
This last act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar 
fall with what smote upon her excited nerves as a most 
astounding clatter. Then—as if the only barrier betwixt 
herself and the world had been thrown down, and a flood 
of evil consequences would come tumbling through the 
gap—she fled into the inner parlor, threw herself into the 
ancestral elbow-chair, and wept. 

Our miserable old Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoyance 
to a writer, who endeavors to represent nature, its various 
attitudes and circumstances, in a reasonably correct out¬ 
line and true coloring, that so much of the mean and ludi- 



THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW 


41 


crous should be hopelessly mixed up with the purest pathos 
which life anywhere supplies to him. What tragic dignity, 
for example, can be wrought into a scene like this! How 
can we elevate our history of retribution for the sin of 
long ago, when, as one of our most prominent figures, we 
are compelled to introduce—not a young and lovely woman, 
nor even the stately remains of beauty, storm-shat¬ 
tered by affliction—but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed 
maiden, in a long-waisted silk gown, and with the strange 
horror of a turban on her head! Her visage is not even 
ugly. It is redeemed from insignificance only by the 
contraction of her eyebrows into a near-sighted scowl. 
And, finally, her great life-trial seems to be, that, after 
sixty years of idleness, she finds it convenient to earn 
comfortable bread by setting up a shop in a small way. 
Nevertheless, if we look through all the heroic fortunes 
of mankind, we shall find this same entanglement of some¬ 
thing mean and trivial with whatever is noblest in joy or 
' sorrow. Life is made up of marble and mud. And, with¬ 
out all the deeper trust in a comprehensive sympathy above 
us, we might hence be led to suspect the insult of a sneer, 
as well as an immitigable frown, on the iron countenance 
of fate. What is called poetic insight is the gift of dis¬ 
cerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, 
the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume 
a garb so sordid. 


Ill 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 

Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon sat in the oaken elbow- 
chair, with her hands over her face, giving way to that 
heavy down-sinking of the heart which most persons have 
experienced, when the image of hope itself seems ponder¬ 
ously moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once 
doubtful and momentous. She was suddenly startled 
by the tinkling alarum—high, sharp and irregular—of a 
little bell. The maiden lady arose upon her feet, as pale 
as a ghost at cock-crow; for she was an enslaved spirit, and 
this the talisman to which she owed obedience. This 
little bell,—to speak in plainer terms,—being fastened 
over the shop-door, was so contrived as to vibrate by 
means of a steel spring, and thus convey notice to the 
inner regions of the house when any customer should cross 
the threshold. Its ugly and spiteful little din (heard now 
for the first time, perhaps, since Hepzibah’s periwigged 
predecessor had retired from trade) at once set very nerve 
of her body in responsive and tumultuous vibration. The 
crisis was upon her! Her first^customer was at the door! 

Without giving herself time for a second thought, she 
rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and 
expression, scowling portentously, and looking far better 
qualified to do fierce battle with a housebreaker than to 
stand smiling behind the counter, bartering small wares 
for a copper recompense. Any ordinary customer, in¬ 
deed, would have turned his back and fled. And yet 

42 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 


43 


there was nothing fierce in Hepzibah’s poor old heart; nor 
had she, at the moment, a single bitter thought against 
the world at large, or one individual man or woman. She 
wished them all well, but wished, too, that she herself were 
done with them, and in her quiet grave. 

The applicant, by this time, stood within the doorway. 
Coming freshly, as he did, out of the morning light, he 
appeared to have brought some of its cheery influences 
into the shop along with him. It was a slender young 
man, not more than one or two and twenty years old, with 
rather a grave and thoughtful expression for his years, 
but likewise a springy alacrity and vigor. These qualities 
were not only perceptible, physically, in his make and mo¬ 
tions, but made themselves felt almost immediately in his 
character. A brown beard, not too silken in its texture, 
fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding it; 
he wore a short mustache, too, and his dark, high-featured 
countenance looked all the better for these natural orna¬ 
ments. As for his dress, it was of the simplest kind; a 
summer sack of cheap and ordinary material, thin check¬ 
ered pantaloons, and a straw hat, by no means of the 
finest braid. Oak Hall might have supplied his entire 
equipment. He was chiefly marked as a gentleman—if 
such, indeed, he made any claim to be—by the rather re¬ 
markable whiteness and nicety of his clean linen. 

He met the scowl of old Hepzibah without apparent 
alarm, as having heretofore encountered it and found it 
harmless. 

“So, my dear Miss Pyncheon,” said the daguerreotypist, 
—for it was that sole other occupant of the seven-gabled 
mansion,—“I am glad to see that you have not shrunk 
from your good,purpose. I merely look in to offer my best 
wishes, and to ask if I can assist you any further in your 
preparations. ,, 


44 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at 
odds with the world, can endure a vast amount of harsh 
treatment, and perhaps be only the stronger for it; whereas 
they give way at once before the simplest expression of 
what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it proved 
with poor Hepzibah; for, when she saw the young man’s 
smile,—looking so much the brighter on a thoughtful 
face,—and heard his kindly tone, she broke first into a 
hysteric giggle and then began to sob. 

“Ah, Mr. Holgrave,” cried she, as soon as she could 
speak, “I never can go through with it! Never, never, 
never! I wish I were dead, and in the old family-tomb, 
with all my forefathers! With my father, and my mother, 
and my sister! Yes, and with my brother, who had far 
better find me there than here! The world is too chill 
and hard,—and I am too old, and too feeble, and too hope¬ 
less!” 

“Oh, believe me, Miss Hepzibah,” said the young man, 
quietly, “these feelings will not trouble you any longer, 
after you are once fairly in the midst of your enterprise. 
They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you 
do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling 
the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to 
be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a child’s story-book. 
I find nothing so singular in life, as that everything ap¬ 
pears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples 
with it. So it will be with what you think so terrible.” 

“But I am a woman!” said Hepzibah, piteously. “I 
was going to say, a lady,—but I consider that as past.” 

“Well; no matter if it be past!” answered the artist, a 
strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through 
the kindliness of his manner. “Let it go! You are the 
better without it. I speak frankly, my dear Miss Pyn- 
cheon! for are we not friends? I look upon this as one of 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 


45 


the fortunate days of your life. It ends an epoch and be¬ 
gins one. Hitherto, the life-blood has been gradually 
chilling in your veins as you sat aloof, within your circle 
of gentility, while the rest of the world was fighting out 
its battle with one kind of necessity or another. Hence¬ 
forth, you will at least have the sense of healthy and nat¬ 
ural effort for a purpose, and of lending your strength— 
be it great or small—to the united struggle of mankind. 
This is success,—all the success that anybody meets 
with! ” 

“It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should 
have ideas like these,” rejoined Hepzibah, drawing up her 
gaunt figure, with slightly offended dignity. “You are a 
man, a young man, and brought up, I suppose, as almost 
everybody is nowadays, with a view to seeking your 
fortune. But I was born a lady, and have always lived 
one; no matter in what narrowness of means, always a 
lady! ” 

“But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I lived 
like one,” said Holgrave, slightly smiling; “so, my dear 
madam, you will hardly expect me to sympathize with 
sensibilities of this kind; though, unless I deceive myself, I 
have some imperfect comprehension of them. These 
names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past 
history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable or 
otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the pres¬ 
ent—and still more in the future condition of society— 
they imply, not privilege, but restriction!” 

“These are new notions,” said the old gentlewoman, 
shaking her head. “I shall never understand them; 
neither do I wish it.” 

“We will cease to speak of them, then,” replied the ar¬ 
tist, with a friendlier smile than his last one, “and I will 
leave you to feel whether it is not better to be a true 


46 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

woman than a lady. Do you really think, Miss Hepzibah, 
that any lady of your family has ever done a more heroic 
thing, since this house was built, than you are performing 
in it to-day? Never; and if the Pyncheons had always 
acted so nobly, I doubt whether an old wizard Maule’s 
anathema, of which you told me once, would have had 
much weight with Providence against them.” 

“Ah!—no, no!” said Hepzibah, not displeased at this 
allusion to the somber dignity of an inherited curse. “If 
old Maule’s ghost, or a descendant of his, could see me 
behind the counter to-day, he would call it the fulfilment 
of his worst wishes. But I thank you for your kindness, 
Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost to be a good shop¬ 
keeper.” 

“Pray do,” said Holgrave, “and let me have the pleas¬ 
ure of being your first customer. I am about taking a 
walk to the sea-shore, before going to my rooms, where I 
misuse Heaven’s blessed sunshine by tracing out human 
features through its agency. A few of those biscuits dipt 
in sea-water, will be just what I need for breakfast. What 
is the price of half a dozen ?” 

“Let me be a lady a moment longer,” replied Hepzibah, 
with a manner of antique stateliness to which a melancholy 
smile lent a kind of grace. She put the biscuits into his 
hand, but rejected the compensation. “A Pyncheon 
must not, at all events under her forefathers’ roof, receive 
money for a morsel of bread from her only friend!” 

Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the mo¬ 
ment, with spirits not quite so much depressed. Soon, 
however, they had subsided nearly to their former dead 
level. With a beating heart, she listened to the footsteps 
of early passengers, which now began to be frequent along 
the street. Once or twice they seemed to linger; these 
strangers, or neighbors, as the case might be, were looking 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 


47 


at the display of toys and petty commodities in Hepzi- 
bah’s shop-window. She was doubly tortured; in part, 
with a sense of overwhelming shame that strange and un¬ 
loving eyes should have the privilege of gazing, and partly 
because the idea occurred to her, with ridiculous impor¬ 
tunity, that the window was not arranged so skilfully, nor 
nearly to so much advantage, as it might have been. It 
seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of her shop might 
depend on the display of a different set of articles, or 
substituting a fairer apple for one which appeared to be 
specked. So she made the change, and straightway 
fancied that everything was spoiled by it; not recognizing 
that it was the nervousness of the juncture, and her own 
native squeamishness as an old maid, that wrought all the 
seeming mischief. 

Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step, 
betwixt two laboring men, as their rough voices denoted 
them to be. After some slight talk about their own 
affairs, one of them chanced to notice the shop-window, 
and directed the other’s attention to it. 

“See here!” cried he; “what do you think of this? 
Trade seems to be looking up in Pyncheon Street! ” 

“Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!” exclaimed the 
other. “In the old Pyncheon House, and underneath the 
Pyncheon Elm! Who would have thought it? Old Maid 
Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop! ” 

“Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?” said his 
friend. “I don’t call it a very good stand. There’s 
another shop just around the corner.” 

“Make it go!” cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous 
expression, as if the very idea were impossible to be con¬ 
ceived. “Not a bit of it! Why, her face—I’ve seen it, 
for I dug her garden for her one year—her face is enough 
to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever so great a 


48 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

mind to trade with her. People can’t stand it, I tell you! 
She scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness 
of temper!” 

“Well, that’s not so much matter,” remarked the other 
man. “These sour-tempered folks are mostly handy at 
business, and know pretty well what they are about. But, 
as you say, I don’t think she’ll do much. This business 
of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all other kinds of 
trade, handicraft, and bodily labor. I know it, to my 
cost! My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost 
five dollars on her outlay!” 

“Poor business!” responded Dixey, in a tone as if he 
were shaking his head,—“poor business!” 

For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, 
there had hardly been so bitter a pang in all her previous 
misery about the matter as what thrilled Hepzibah’s 
heart, on overhearing the above conversation. The testi¬ 
mony in regard to her scowl was frightfully important; 
it seemed to hold up her image wholly relieved from the 
false light of her self-partialities, and so hideous that she 
dared not look at it. She was absurdly hurt, moreover, 
by the slight and idle effect that her setting up shop— 
an event of such breathless interest to herself—appeared 
to have upon the public, of which these two men were the 
nearest representatives. A glance; a passing word or two; 
a coarse laugh; and she was doubtless forgotten before 
they turned the corner! They cared nothing for her 
dignity, and just as little for her degradation. Then, also, 
the augury of ill-success, uttered from the sure wisdom of 
experience, fell upon her half-dead hope like a clod into a 
grave. The man’s wife had already tried the same experi¬ 
ment, and failed! How could the born lady,—the recluse 
of half a lifetime, utterly unpractised in the world, at sixty 
years of age,—how could she ever dream of succeeding, 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 


49 


when the hard, vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyed New Eng¬ 
land woman had lost five dollars on her little outlay! 
Success presented itself as an impossibility, and the hope 
of it as a wild hallucination. 

Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive Hep- 
zibah mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind of 
panorama, representing the great thoroughfare of a city 
all astir with customers. So many and so magnificent 
shops as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, dry-goods 
stores, with their immense panes of plate-glass, their 
gorgeous fixtures, their vast and complete assortments of 
merchandise, in which fortunes had been invested; and 
those noble mirrors at the farther end of each establish¬ 
ment, doubling all this wealth by a brightly burnished 
vista of unrealities! On one side of the street this splendid 
bazaar, with a multitude of perfumed and glossy sales¬ 
men, smirking, smiling, bowing, and measuring out the 
goods. On the other, the dusky old House of the Seven 
Gables, with the antiquated shop-window under its pro¬ 
jecting story, and Hepzibah herself, in a gown of rusty 
black silk, behind the counter, scowling at the world as it 
went by! This mighty contrast thrust itself forward as a 
fair expression of the odds against which she was to begin 
her struggle for a subsistence. Success? Preposterous! 
She would never think of it again! The house might just 
as well be buried in an eternal fog while all other houses 
had the sunshine on them; for not a foot would ever cross 
the threshold, nor a hand so much as try the door! 

But at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head, 
tinkled as if it were bewitched. The old gentlewoman’s 
heart seemed to be attached to the same steel spring, for it 
went through a series of sharp jerks, in unison with the 
sound. The door was thrust open, although no human 
form was perceptible on the other side of the half-window. 


50 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Hepzibah, nevertheless, stood at a gaze, with her hands 
clasped, looking very much as if she had summoned up an 
evil spirit, and were afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the 
encounter. 

“Heaven help me!” she groaned, mentally. “Now is 
my hour of need!” 

The door, which moved with difficulty on its creaking 
and rusty hinges, being forced quite open, a square and 
sturdy little urchin became apparent, with cheeks as red 
as an apple. He was clad rather shabbily (but, as it 
seemed, more owing to his mother’s carelessness than his 
father’s poverty), in a blue apron, very wide and short 
trousers, shoes somewhat out at the toes, and a chip-hat, 
with the frizzles of his curly hair sticking through its 
crevices. A book and a small slate, under his arm, indi¬ 
cated that he was on his way to school. He stared at Hep¬ 
zibah a moment, as an elder customer than himself would 
have been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make 
of the tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she re¬ 
garded him. 

“Well, child,” said she, taking heart at sight of a per¬ 
sonage so little formidable,—“well, my child, what did 
you wish for?” 

“That Jim Crow there in the window,” answered the 
urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the ginger¬ 
bread figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered 
along to school; “the one that has not a broken foot.” 

So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and, taking the 
effigy from the shop-window, delivered it to her first 
customer. 

“No matter for the money,” said she, giving him a 
little push towards the door; for her old gentility was 
contumaciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin, 
and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 


51 


child’s pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale ginger¬ 
bread. “No matter for the cent. You are welcome to 
Jim Crow.” 

The child, staring with round eyes at this instance 
of liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large experience 
of cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread, and quitted 
the premises. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk 
(little cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow’s head was 
in his mouth. As he had not been careful to shut the door, 
Hepzibah was at the pains of closing it after him, with a 
pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of 
young people, and particularly of small boys. She had just 
placed another representative of the renowned Jim Crow 
at the window, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamor¬ 
ously, and again the door being thrust open, with its 
characteristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little 
urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit. 
The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast, as yet 
hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his 
mouth. 

“What is it now, child?” asked the maiden lady, rather 
impatiently; “did you come back to shut the door?” 

“No,” answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that 
had just been put up; “I want that other Jim Crow.” 

“Well, here it is for you,” said Hepzibah, reaching it 
down; but recognizing that this pertinacious customer 
would not quit her on any other terms, so long as she had a 
gingerbread figure in her shop, she partly drew back her 
extended hand, “Where is the cent?” 

The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born 
Yankee, would have preferred the better bargain to the 
worse. Looking somewhat chagrined, he put the coin 
into Hepzibah’s hand, and departed, sending the second 
Jim Crow in quest of the former one. The new shopkeeper 


52 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

dropped the first solid result of her commercial enterprise 
into the till. It was done! The sordid stain of that copper 
coin could never be washed away from her palm. The 
little school-boy, aided by the impish figure of the negro 
dancer, had wrought an irreparable ruin. The structure of 
ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as 
if his childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled man¬ 
sion. Now let Hepzibah turn the old Pyncheon portraits 
with their faces to the wall, and take the map of her East¬ 
ern territory to kindle the kitchen fire, and blow up the 
flame with the empty breath of her ancestral traditions! 
What had she to do with ancestry? Nothing; no more 
than with posterity! No lady, now, but simply Hepzibah 
Pyncheon, a forlorn old maid, and keeper of a cent-shop! 

Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas some¬ 
what ostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether 
surprising what a calmness had come over her. The 
anxiety and misgivings which had tormented her, whether 
asleep or in melancholy day-dreams, ever since her project 
began to take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished 
quite away. She felt the novelty of her position, indeed, 
but no longer with disturbance or affright. Now and then, 
there came a thrill of almost youthful enjoyment. It 
was the invigorating breath of a fresh outward atmosphere, 
after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life. 
So wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that 
we do not know of! The healthiest glow that Hepzibah 
had known for years had come now in the dreaded crisis, 
when, for the first time, she tad put forth her hand to help 
herself. The little circlet of the school-boy’s copper coin— 
dim and lusterless though it was, with the small services 
which it had been doing here and there about the world— 
had proved a talisman, fragrant with good, and deserving 
to be set in gold and worn next her heart. It was as potent, 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 


53 


and perhaps endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a 
galvanic ring! Hepzibah, at all events, was indebted to 
its subtle operation both in body and spirit; so much the 
more, as it inspired her with energy to get .some breakfast, 
at which, still the better to keep up her courage, she 
allowed herself an extra spoonful in her infusion of black tea. 

Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on, 
however, without many and serious interruptions of this 
mood of cheerful vigor. As a general rule, Providence 
seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that 
degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a 
reasonably full exertion of their powers. In the case of 
our old gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort 
had subsided, the despondency of her whole life threat¬ 
ened, ever and anon, to return. It was like the heavy mass 
of clouds which we may often see obscuring the sky, and 
making a gray twilight everywhere, until, towards night¬ 
fall, it yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine. But, 
always, the envious cloud strives to gather again across 
the streak of celestial azure. 

Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but 
rather slowly; in some cases, too, it must be owned, with 
little satisfaction either to themselves or Miss Hepzibah; 
nor, on the whole, with an aggregate of very rich emolu¬ 
ment to the till. A little girl, sent by her mother to match 
a skein of cotton thread, of a peculiar hue, took one that 
the near-sighted old lady pronounced extremely like, but 
soon came running back, with a blunt and cross mes¬ 
sage, that it would not do, and, besides, was very rotten! 
Then, there was a pale, care-wrinkled woman, not old but 
haggard, and already with streaks of gray among her hair, 
like silver ribbons; one of those women, naturally delicate, 
whom you at once recognize as worn to death by a brute— 
probably a drunken brute—of a husband, and at least nine 


54 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


children. She wanted a few pounds of flour, and offered 
the money, which the decayed gentlewoman silently re¬ 
jected, and gave the poor soul better measure than if she 
had taken it. Shortly afterwards, a man in a blue cotton 
frock, much soiled, came in and bought a pipe, filling the 
whole shop, meanwhile, with the hot odor of strong drink, 
not only exhaled in the torrid atmosphere of his breath, 
but oozing out of his entire system, like an inflammable 
gas. It was impressed on Hepzibah’s mind that this was 
the husband of the care-wrinkled woman. He asked for a 
paper of tobacco; and as she had neglected to provide her¬ 
self with the article, her brutal customer dashed down his 
newly-bought pipe and left the shop, muttering some un¬ 
intelligible words, which had the tone and bitterness of a 
curse. Hereupon Hepzibah threw up her eyes, uninten¬ 
tionally scowling in the face of Providence! 

No less than five persons, during the forenoon, inquired 
for ginger-beer, or root-beer, or any drink of a similar 
brewage, and, obtaining nothing of the kind, went off in an 
exceedingly bad humor. Three of them left the door 
open, and the other two pulled it so spitefully in going out 
that the little bell played the very deuce with Hepzibah’s 
nerves. A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the 
neighborhood, burst breathless into the shop, fiercely de¬ 
manding yeast; and when the poor gentlewoman, with her 
cold shyness of manner, gave her hot customer to under¬ 
stand that she did not keep the article, this very capable 
housewife took upon herself to administer a regular rebuke. 

“A cent-shop, and noV e ast!” quoth she; “that will 
never do! Who ever heard of such a thing? Your loaf 
will never rise, no more than mine will to-day. You had 
better shut up shop at once.” 

“Well,” said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, “perhaps 
I had!” 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER 


55 


Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her 
lady-like sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the 
familiar, if not rude, tone with which people addressed her. 
They evidently considered themselves not merely her equals, 
but her patrons and superiors. Now, Hepzibah had uncon¬ 
sciously flattered herself with the idea that there would be 
a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person, 
which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, 
or, at least, a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand, 
nothing tortured her more intolerably than when this recog¬ 
nition was too prominently expressed. To one or two rather 
officious offers of sympathy, her responses were little short of 
acrimonious; and, we regret to say, Hepzibah was thrown 
into a positively unchristian state of mind by the suspicion 
that one of her customers was drawn to the shop, not by 
any real need of the article which she pretended to seek, but 
by a wicked wish to stare at her. The vulgar creature was 
determined to see for herself what sort of a figure a mildewed 
piece of aristocracy, after wasting all the bloom and much 
of the decline of her life apart from the world, would cut 
behind a counter. In this particular case, however mechanical 
and innocuous it might be at other times, Hepzibah’s con¬ 
tortion of brow served her in good stead. 

“I never was so frightened in my life!” said the curious 
customer, in describing the incident to one of her acquain¬ 
tances. “She’s a real old vixen, take my word of it! She 
says little, to be sure; but if you could only see the mischief 
in her eye!” 

On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our de¬ 
cayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions as to 
the temper and manners of what she termed the lower classes, 
whom heretofore she had looked down upon with a gentle 
and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a sphere of 
unquestionable superiority. But, unfortunately, she had 


56 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


likewise to struggle against a bitter emotion of a directly 
opposite kind: a sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards 
the idle aristocracy to which it had so recently been her 
pride to belong. When a lady, in a delicate and costly 
summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully swaying 
gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you 
look at her beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she 
trod on the dust or floated in the air,—when such a vision 
happened to pass through this retired street, leaving it 
tenderly and delusively fragrant with her passage, as if a 
bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along,—then again, 
it is to be feared, old Hepzibah’s scowl could no longer vindi¬ 
cate itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness. 

“For what end,” thought she, giving vent to that feeling 
of hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor 
in presence of the rich,—“for what good end, in the 
wisdom of Providence, does that woman live? Must the 
whole world toil, that the palms of her hands may be kept 
white and delicate?” 

Then ashamed and penitent, she hid her face. 

“May God forgive me!” said she. 

Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the inward 
and outward history of the first half-day into considera¬ 
tion, Hepzibah began to fear that the shop would prove her 
ruin in a moral and religious point of view, without con¬ 
tributing very essentially towards even her temporal 
welfare. 


\ 


IV 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER 

Towards noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentleman, large 
and portly, and of remarkably dignified demeanor, passing 
slowly along on the opposite side of the white and dusty 
street. On coming within the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, 
he stopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe the 
perspiration from his brow) seemed to scrutinize, with 
especial interest, the dilapidated and rusty-visaged House of 
the Seven Gables. He himself, in a very different style, 
was as well worth looking at as the house. No better model 
need be sought, nor could have been found, of a very high 
order of respectability, which, by some indescribable magic, 
not merely expressed itself in his looks and gestures, but 
even governed the fashion of his garments, and rendered 
them all proper and essential to the man. Without appear¬ 
ing to differ, in any tangible way, from other people’s clothes, 
there was yet a wide and rich gravity about them that must 
have been a characteristic of the wearer, since it could not 
be defined as pertaining either to the cut or material. His 
gold-headed cane, too,—a serviceable staff, of dark polished 
wood,—had similar traits, and, had it chosen to take a walk 
by itself, would have been recognized anywhere as a toler¬ 
ably adequate representative of its master. This character 
—which showed itself so strikingly in everything about him, 
and the effect of which we seek to convey to the reader— 
went no deeper than his station, habits of life, and external 

57 


58 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

circumstances. One perceived him to be a personage of 
marked influence and authority; and, especially, you could 
feel just as certain that he was opulent as if he had exhibited 
his bank account, or as if you had seen him touching the 
twigs of the Pyncheon Elm, and, Midas-like, transmuting 
them to gold. 

In his youth, he had probably been considered a handsome 
man; at his present age, his brow was too heavy, his temples 
too bare, his remaining hair too gray, his eye too cold, his 
lips too closely compressed, to bear any relation to mere 
personal beauty. He would have made a good and massive 
portrait; better now, perhaps, than at any previous period 
of his life, although his look might grow positively harsh 
in the process of being fixed upon the canvas. The artist 
would have found it desirable to study his face, and prove 
its capacity for varied expression; to darken it with a frown,— 
to kindle it up with a smile. 

While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Pyncheon 
House, both the frown and the smile passed successively 
over his countenance. His eye rested on the shop-window, 
and putting up a pair of gold-bowed spectacles, which he 
held in his hand, he minutely surveyed Hepzibah’s little 
arrangement of toys and commodities. At first it seemed not 
to please him,—nay, to cause him exceeding displeasure,— 
and yet, the very next moment, he smiled. While the latter 
expression was yet on his lips, he caught a glimpse of Hep- 
zibah, who had involuntarily bent forward to the window; 
and then the smile changed from acrid and disagreeable to 
the sunniest complacency and benevolence. He bowed, with 
a happy mixture of dignity and courteous kindliness, and 
pursued his way. 

“There he is!” said Hepzibah to herself, gulping down a 
very bitter emotion, and, since she could not rid herself of 
it, trying to drive it back into her heart. “What does he 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER 


59 


think of it, I wonder? Does it please him? Ah! he is 
looking back!” 

The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned him¬ 
self half about, still with his eyes fixed on the shop-window. 
In fact, he wheeled wholly round, and commenced a step or 
two, as if designing to enter the shop; but, as it chanced, 
his purpose was anticipated by Hepzibah’s first customer, 
the little cannibal of Jim Crow, who, staring up at the 
window, was irresistibly attracted by an elephant of ginger¬ 
bread. What a grand appetite had this small urchin!—Two 
Jim Crows immediately after breakfast!—and now an ele¬ 
phant, as a preliminary whet before dinner! By the time 
this latter purchase was completed, the elderly gentleman 
had resumed his way, and turned the street corner. 

“Take it as you like, Cousin Jaffrey!” muttered the 
maiden lady, as she drew back, after cautiously thrusting 
out her head, and looking up and down the street,—“take it 
as you like! You have seen my little shop-window! Well! — 
what have you to say?—is not the Pyncheon House my 
own, while I’m alive?” 

After this incident, Hepzibah retreated to the back parlor, 
where she at first caught up a half-finished stocking, and 
began knitting at it with nervous and irregular jerks; but 
quickly finding herself at odds with the stitches, she threw 
it aside, and walked hurriedly about the room. At length, 
she paused before the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her 
ancestor, and the founder of the house. In one sense, this 
picture had almost faded into the canvas, and hidden itself 
behind the duskiness of age; in another, she could not but 
fancy that it had been growing more prominent, and strik¬ 
ingly expressive, ever since her earliest familiarity with it 
as a child. For, while the physical outline and substance 
were darkening away from the beholder’s eye, the bold, 
hard, and, at the same time, indirect character of the man 


60 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


seemed to be brought out in a kind of spiritual relief. Such 
an effect may occasionally be observed in pictures of antique 
date. They acquire a look which an artist (if he have any¬ 
thing like the complacency of artists nowadays) would never 
dream of presenting to a patron as his own characteristic 
expression, but which, nevertheless, we at once recognize as 
reflecting the unlovely truth of a human soul. In such cases, 
the painter’s deep conception of his subject’s inward traits 
has wrought itself into the essence of the picture, and is seen 
after the superficial coloring has been rubbed off by time. 

While gazing at the portrait, Hepzibah trembled under 
its eye. Her hereditary reverence made her afraid to judge 
the character of the original so harshly as a perception of 
the truth compelled her to do. But still she gazed, because 
the face of the picture enabled her—at least, she fancied so— 
to read more accurately, and to a greater depth, the face 
which she had just seen in the street. 

“This is the very man!” murmured she to herself. “Let 
Jaffrey Pyncheon smile as he will, there is that look beneath! 
Put on him a skull-cap, and a band, and a black cloak, and 
a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other,—then let 
Jaffrey smile as he might,—nobody would doubt that it was 
the old Pyncheon come again! He has proved himself the 
very man to build up a new house! Perhaps, too, to draw 
down a new curse!” 

Thus did Hepzibah bewilder herself with these fantasies 
of the old time. She had dwelt too much alone,—too long 
in the Pyncheon House,—until her very brain was impreg¬ 
nated with the dry-rot of its timbers. She needed a walk 
along the noonday street to keep her sane. 

By the spell of^contrast, another portrait rose up before 
her, painted with more daring flattery than any artist would 
have ventured upon, but yet so delicately touched that the 
likeness remained perfect. Malbone’s miniature, though 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER 


61 


from the same original, was far inferior to Hepzibah’s air- 
drawn picture, at which affection and sorrowful remembrance 
wrought together. Soft, mildly, and cheerfully contempla¬ 
tive, with full, red lips, just on the verge of a smile, which 
the eyes seemed to herald by a gentle kindling-up of their 
orbs! Feminine traits, moulded inseparably with those of 
the other sex! The miniature, likewise, had this last peculi¬ 
arity ; so that you inevitably thought of the original as resem¬ 
bling his mother, and she a lovely and lovable woman, with 
perhaps some beautiful infirmity of character, that made 
it all the pleasanter to know and easier to love her. 

“Yes,” thought Hepzibah, with grief of which it was only 
the more tolerable portion that welled up from her heart 
to her eyelids, “they persecuted his mother in him! He 
never was a Pyncheon!” 

But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from a 
remote distance,—so far that Hepzibah descended into the 
sepulchral depths of her reminiscences. On entering the 
shop, she found an old man there, a humble resident of 
Pyncheon Street, and whom, for a great many years past, 
she had suffered to be a kind of familiar of the house. He 
was an immemorial personage, who seemed always to have 
had a white head and wrinkles, and never to have possessed 
but a single tooth, and that a half-decayed one, in front of 
the upper jaw. Well advanced as Hepzibah was, she could 
not remember when Uncle Venner, as the neighborhood 
called him, had not gone up and down the street, stooping 
a little and drawing his feet heavily over the gravel or 
pavement. But still there was something tough and vigorous 
about him, that not only kept him in daily breath, but 
enabled him to fill a place which would else have been 
vacant in the apparently crowded world. To go of errands 
with his slow and shuffling gait, which made you doubt how 
he ever was to arrive anywhere; to saw a small household’s 


62 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


foot or two of firewood, or knock to pieces an old barrel, or 
split up a pine board for kindling-stuff; in summer, to dig 
the few yards of garden ground appertaining to a low-rented 
tenement, and share the produce of his labor at the halves; 
in winter, to shovel away the snow from the sidewalk, or 
open paths to the woodshed, or along the clothes-line; such 
were some of the essential offices which Uncle Venner per¬ 
formed among at least a score of families. Within that 
circle, he claimed the same sort of privilege, and probably 
felt as much warmth of interest, as a clergyman does in the 
range of his parishioners. Not that he laid claim to the tithe 
pig; but, as an analogous mode of reverence, he went his 
rounds, every morning, to gather up the crumbs of the table 
and over-flowings of the dinner-pot, as food for a pig of 
his own. 

In his younger days—for, after all, there was a dim tradi¬ 
tion that he had been, not young, but younger—Uncle Venner 
was commonly regarded as rather deficient, than otherwise, 
in his wits. In truth he had virtually pleaded guilty to the 
charge, by scarcely aiming at such success as other men 
seek, and by taking only that humble and modest part in 
the intercourse of life which belongs to the alleged deficiency. 
But now, in his extreme old age,—whether it were that his 
long and hard experience had actually brightened him, or 
that his decaying judgment rendered him less capable of 
fairly measuring himself,—the venerable man made prer 
tension to no little wisdom, and really enjoyed the credit of 
it. There was likewise, at times, a vein of something like 
poetry in him; it was the moss or wall-flower of his mind 
in its small dilapidation, and gave a charm to what might 
have been vulgar and commonplace in his earlier and middle 
life. Hepzibah had a regard for him, because his name was 
ancient in the town and had formerly been respectable. It 
was a still better reason for awarding him a species of familiar 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER 


63 


reverence that Uncle Yenner was himself the most ancient 
existence, whether of man or thing, in Pyncheon Street, 
except the House of the Seven Gables, and perhaps the elm 
that over-shadowed it. 

This patriarch now presented himself before Hepzibah, 
clad in an old blue coat, which had a fashionable air, and 
must have accrued to him from the cast-off wardrobe of 
some dashing clerk. As for his trousers, they were of tow- 
cloth, very short in the legs, and bagging down strangely in 
the rear, but yet having a suitableness to his figure which 
his other garment entirely lacked. His hat had relation to 
no other part of his dress, and but very little to the head 
that wore it. Thus Uncle Venner was a miscellaneous old 
gentleman, partly himself, but, in good measure, somebody 
else; patched together, too, of different epochs; an epitome 
of times and fashions. 

“So, you have really begun trade,” said he,—“really begun 
trade! Well, I’m glad to see it. Young people should never 
live idle in the world, nor old ones neither, unless when the 
rheumatize gets hold of them. It has given me warning 
already; and in two or three years longer, I shall think of 
putting aside business and retiring to my farm. That’s 
yonder,—the great brick house, you know,—the workhouse, 
most folks call it; but I mean to do my work first, and go 
there to be idle and enjoy myself. And I’m glad to see you 
beginning to do your work, Miss Hepzibah! ” 

“Thank you, Uncle Venner,” said Hepzibah, smiling; for 
she always felt kindly towards the simple and talkative old 
man. Had he been an old woman, she might probably have 
repelled the freedom, which she now took in good part. “It 
is time for me to begin work, indeed! Or, to speak the 
truth, I have just begun when I ought to be giving it up.” 

“Oh, never say that, Miss Hepzibah!” answered the old 
man. “You are a young woman yet. Why, I hardly thought 


64 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


myself younger than I am now, it seems so little while ago 
since I used to see you playing about the door of the old 
house, quite a small child! Oftener, though, you used to 
be sitting at the threshold, and looking gravely into the 
street; for you had always a grave kind of way with you,— 
a grown-up air, when you were only the height of my knee. 
It seems as if I saw you now; and your grandfather with his 
red cloak, and his white wig, and his cocked hat, and his 
cane, coming out of the house, and stepping so grandly up 
the street! Those old gentlemen that grew up before the 
Revolution used to put on grand airs. In my young days, the 
great man of the town was commonly called King; and his 
wife, not Queen to be sure, but Lady. Nowadays, a man 
would not dare to be called King; and if he feels himself 
a little above common folks, he only stoops so much the 
lower to them. I met your cousin, the Judge, ten minutes 
ago; and, in my old tow-cloth trousers, as you see, the 
Judge raised his hat to me, I do believe! At any rate, the 
Judge bowed and smiled!” 

“Yes,” said Hepzibah, with something bitter stealing un¬ 
awares into her tone; “my cousin Jaffrey is thought to have 
a very pleasant smile!” 

“And so he has!” replied Uncle Venner. “And that’s 
rather remarkable in a Pyncheon; for, begging your pardon, 
Miss Hepzibah, they never had the name of being an easy 
and agreeable set of folks. There was no getting close to 
them. But now, Miss Hepzibah, if an old man may be bold 
to ask, why don’t Judge Pyncheon, with his great means, 
step forward, and tell his cousin to shut up her little shop 
at once? It’s for your credit to be doing something, but 
it’s not for the Judge’s credit to let you!” 

“We won’t talk of this, if you please, LTncle Venner,” said 
Hepzibah, coldly. “I ought to say, however, that, if I 
choose to earn bread for myself, it is not Judge Pyncheon’s 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER 


65 


fault. Neither will he deserve the blame,” added she, more 
kindly, remembering Uncle Vernier’s privileges of age and 
humble familiarity, “if I should, by and by, find it con¬ 
venient to retire with you to your farm.” 

“And it’s no bad place, either, that farm of mine!” cried 
the old man, cheerily, as if there were something positively 
delightful in the prospect. “No bad place is the great brick 
farm-house, especially for them that will find a good many 
old cronies there, as will be my case. I quite long to be 
among them, sometimes, of the winter evenings; for it is 
but dull business for a lonesome elderly man, like me, to 
be nodding, by the hour together, with no company but his 
air-tight stove. Summer or winter, there’s a great deal to 
be said in favor of my farm! And, take it in the autumn, 
what can be pleasanter than to spend a whole day on the 
sunny side of a barn or a wood-pile, chatting with somebody 
as old as one’s self; or, perhaps, idling away the time with a 
natural-born simpleton, who knows how to be idle, because 
even our busy Yankees never have found out how to put 
him to any use? Upon m^ word, Miss Hepzibah, I doubt 
whether I’ve ever been so comfortable as I mean to be at 
my farm, which most folks call the workhouse. But you,— 
you’re a young woman yet,—you never need go there! 
Something still better will turn up for you. I’m sure of it!” 

Hepzibah fancied that there was something peculiar in 
her venerable friend’s look and tone; insomuch, that she 
gazed into his face with considerable earnestness, endeavor¬ 
ing to discover what secret meaning, if any, might be lurking 
there. Individuals whose affairs have reached an utterly 
desperate crisis almost invariably keep themselves alive 
with hopes, so much the more airily magnificent as they 
have the less of solid matter within their grasp whereof to 
mould any judicious and moderate expectation of good. 
Thus, all the while Hepzibah was perfecting the scheme of 


66 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea 
that some harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in 
her favor. For example, an uncle—who had sailed for India 
fifty years before, and never been heard of since—might yet 
return, and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme 
and decrepit age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and 
Oriental shawls and turbans, and make her the ultimate 
heiress of his unreckonable riches. Or the member of Par¬ 
liament, now at the head of the English branch of the 
family,—with which the elder stock, on this side of the 
Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the last two 
centuries,—this eminent gentleman might invite Hepzibah 
to quit the ruinous House of the Seven Gables, and come 
over to dwell with her kindred at Pyncheon Hall. But, 
for reasons the most imperative, she could not yield to his 
request. It was more probable, therefore, that the descend¬ 
ants of a Pyncheon who had emigrated to Virginia, in some 
past generation, and become a great planter there,—hear¬ 
ing of Hepzibah’s destitution, and impelled by the splendid 
generosity of character with which their Virginian mixture 
must have enriched the New England blood,—would send 
her a remittance of a thousand dollars, with a hint of re¬ 
peating the favor annually. Or,—and, surely, anything so 
undeniably just could not be beyond the limits of reasonable 
anticipation,—the great claim to the heritage of Waldo 
County might finally be decided in favor of the Pyncheons; 
so that, instead of keeping a cent-shop, Hepzibah would 
build a palace, and look down from its highest tower on 
hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own share of the 
ancestral territory. 

These were some of the fantasies which she had long 
dreamed about; and, aided by these, Uncle Venner’s casual 
attempt at encouragement kindled a strange festal glory in 
the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of her brain, as if that 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER 67 


inner world were suddenly lighted up with gas. But either 
he knew nothing of her castles in the air—as how should he ? 
—or else her earnest scowl disturbed his recollection, as it 
might a more courageous man’s. Instead of pursuing any 
weightier topic, Uncle Venner was pleased to favor poor 
Hepzibah with some sage counsel in her shop-keeping 
capacity. 

“Give no credit!”—these were some of his golden maxims, 
—“Never take paper-money! Look well to your change! 
Ring the silver on the four-pound weight ! Shove back all 
English half-pence and base copper tokens, such as are very 
plenty about town! At your leisure hours, knit children’s 
woolen socks and mittens! Brew your own yeast, and make 
your own ginger-beer!” 

And while Hepzibah was doing her utmost to digest the 
hard little pellets of his already uttered wisdom, he gave 
vent to his final, and what he declared to be his all-important 
advice, as follows:— 

“Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile 
pleasantly as you hand them what they ask for! A stale 
article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go 
off better than a fresh one that you’ve scowled upon.” 

To this last apothegm poor Hepzibah responded with a 
sigh so deep and heavy that it almost rustled Uncle Venner 
quite away, like a withered leaf,—as he was,—before an 
autumnal gale. Recovering himself, however, he bent for¬ 
ward, and, with a good deal of feeling in his ancient visage, 
beckoned her nearer to him. 

“When do you expect him home?” whispered he. 

“Whom do you mean?” asked Hepzibah, turning pale. 

“Ah? you don’t love to talk about it,” said Uncle Venner. 
“Well, well! we’ll say no more, though there’s word of it 
all over town. I remember him, Miss Hepzibah, before he 
could run alone!” 


68 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


During the remainder of the day poor Hepzibah acquitted 
herself even less creditably, as a shop-keeper, than in her 
earlier efforts. She appeared to be walking in a dream; or, 
more truly, the vivid life and reality assumed by her emo¬ 
tions made all outward occurrences unsubstantial, like the 
teasing phantasms of a half-conscious slumber. She still 
responded, mechanically, to the frequent summons of the 
shop-bell, and, at the demand of her customers, went prying 
with vague eyes about the shop, proffering them one article 
after another, and thrusting aside—perversely, as most of 
them supposed—the identical thing they asked for. There is 
sad confusion, indeed, when the spirit thus flits away into 
the past, or into the more awful future, or, in any manner, 
steps across the spaceless boundary betwixt its own region 
and the actual world; where the body remains to guide itself 
as best it may, with little more than the mechanism of 
animal life. It is like death, without death’s quiet privi¬ 
lege,—its freedom from mortal care. Worst of all, when 
the actual duties are comprised in such petty details as now 
vexed the brooding soul of the old gentlewoman. As the 
animosity of fate would have it, there was a great influx 
of custom in the course of the afternoon. Hepzibah blun¬ 
dered to and fro about her small place of business, commit¬ 
ting the most unheard of errors: now stringing up twelve, 
and now seven, tallow-candles, instead of ten to the pound; 
selling ginger for Scotch snuff, pins for needles, and needles 
for pins; misreckoning her change, sometimes to the public 
detriment, and much oftener to her own; and thus she went 
on, doing her utmost to bring chaos back again, until, at 
the close of the day’s labor, to her inexplicable astonishment, 
she found the money-drawer almost destitute of coin. After 
all her painful traffic, the whole proceeds were perhaps half 
a dozen coppers, and a\ questionable ninepence which ulti¬ 
mately proved to be copper likewise. 


A DAY BEHIND THE. COUNTER 


69 


At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that the 
day had reached its end. Never before had she had such a 
sense of the intolerable length of time that creeps between 
dawn and sunset, and of the miserable irksomeness of having 
aught to do, and of the better wisdom that it would be, to lie 
down at once, in sullen resignation, and let life, and its toils 
and vexations, trample over one’s prostrate body as they 
may! Hepzibah’s final operation was with the little de- 
vourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who now proposed 
to eat a camel. In her bewilderment, she offered him first a 
wooden dragoon, and next a handful of marbles; neither of 
which being adapted to his else omnivorous appetite, she 
hastily held out her whole remaining stock of natural history 
in gingerbread, and huddled the small customer out of the 
shop. She then muffled the bell in an unfinished stocking, 
and put up the oaken bar across the door. 

During the latter process, an omnibus came to a stand¬ 
still under the branches of the elm-tree. Hepzibah’s heart 
was in her mouth. Remote and dusky, and with no sun¬ 
shine on all the intervening space, was that region of the 
Past whence her only guest might be expected to arrive! 
Was she to meet him now? 

Somebody, at all events, was passing from the farthest 
interior of the omnibus towards its entrance. A gentleman 
alighted; but it was only to offer his hand to a young girl 
whose slender figure, nowise needing such assistance, now 
lightly descended the steps, and made an airy little jump 
from the final one to the sidewalk. She rewarded her 
cavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was seen 
reflected on his own face as he reentered the vehicle. The 
girl then turned towards the House of the Seven Gables, 
to the door of which, meanwhile,—not the shop-door, but 
the antique portal,—the omnibus-man had carried a light 
trunk and a bandbox. First giving a sharp rap of the old 


70 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


iron knocker, he left his passenger and her luggage at the 
door-step, and departed. 

“Who can it be?” thought Hepzibah, who had been screw¬ 
ing her visual organs into the acutest focus of which they 
were capable. “The girl must have mistaken the house!” 

She stole softly into the hall, and, herself invisible, gazed 
through the dusty side-lights of the portal at the young, 
blooming, and very cheerful face, which presented itself for 
admittance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a face to 
which almost any door would have opened of its own accord. 

The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so 
orderly and obedient to common rules, as you at once recog¬ 
nized her to be, was widely in contrast, at that moment, with 
everything about her. The sordid and ugly luxuriance of 
gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of the house, and the 
heavy projection that overshadowed her, and the time-worn 
framework of the door,—none of these things belonged to 
her sphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what 
dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a 
propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether fit that 
the girl should be standing at the threshold. It was no less 
evidently proper that the door should swing open to admit 
her. The maiden lady, herself, sternly inhospitable in her 
first purposes, soon began to feel that the door ought to 
be shoved back, and the rusty key be turned in the re¬ 
luctant lock. 

“Can it be Phoebe?” questioned she within herself. “It 
must be little Phoebe; for it can be nobody else,—and there 
is a look of her father about her, too! But what does she 
want here? And how like a country cousin, to come down 
upon a poor body in this way, without so much as a day’s 
notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well; 
she must have a night’s lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow 
the child shall go back to her mother! ” 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER 71 


Phoebe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot 
of the Pyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as 
a native of a rural part of New England, where the old 
fashions and feelings of relationship are still partially kept 
up. In her own circle, it was regarded as by no means im¬ 
proper for kinsfolk to visit one another without invitation, 
or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in considera¬ 
tion of Miss Hepzibah’s recluse way of life, a letter had 
actually been written and despatched, conveying informa¬ 
tion of Phoebe’s projected visit. This epistle, for three or 
four days past, had been in the pocket of the penny-postman, 
who, happening to have no other business in Pyncheon 
Street, had not yet made it convenient to call at the House 
of the Seven Gables. 

“No!—she can stay only one night,” said Hepzibah, un¬ 
bolting the door. “If Clifford were to find her here, it 
might disturb him!” 


Y 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 

Phcebe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in 
a chamber that looked down on the garden of the old house. 
It fronted towards the east, so that at a very seasonable 
hour a glow of crimson light came flooding through the 
window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and paper-hangings in 
its own hue. There were curtains to Phoebe’s bed; a dark, 
antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which 
had been rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which 
now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a night in 
that one corner, while elsewhere it was beginning to be day. 
The morning light, however, soon stole into the aperture 
at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains. Finding 
the new guest there,—with a bloom on her cheeks like the 
morning’s own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in 
her limbs, as when an early breeze moves the foliage,—the 
dawn kissed her brow. It was the caress which a dewy 
maiden—such as the Dawn is, immortally—gives to her 
sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of irresistible fond¬ 
ness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now to 
unclose her eyes. 

At the touch of those lips of light, Phcebe quietly awoke, 
and, for a moment, did not recognize where she was, nor 
how those heavy curtains chanced to be festooned around 
her. Nothing, indeed, was absolutely plain to her, except 
that it was now early morning, and that, whatever might 
happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say 

72 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 


73 


her prayers. She was the more inclined to devotion from 
the grim aspect of the chamber and its furniture, especially 
the tall, stiff chairs; one of which stood close by her bedside, 
and looked as if some old-fash;oned personage had been sit¬ 
ting there all night, and had vanished only just in season 
to escape discovery. 

When Phoebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the 
window, and saw a rose-bush in the garden. Being a very 
tall one, and of luxuriant growth, it had been propped up 
against the side of the house, and was literally covered with 
a rare and very beautiful species of white rose. A large 
portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight 
or mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a fair distance, the 
whole rose-bush looked as if it had been brought from Eden 
that very summer, together with the mould in which it grew. 
The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been planted by 
Alice Pyncheon,—she was Phoebe’s great-great-grand-aunt, 
—in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation as a garden- 
plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of 
vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however, out of the 
old earth, the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense 
up to their Creator; nor could it have been the less pure and 
acceptable, because Phoebe’s young breath mingled with it, 
as the fragrance floated past the window. Hastening down 
the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way into 
the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the roses, 
and brought them to her chamber. 

Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as 
their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. 
It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones 
to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; 
and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitable¬ 
ness to any place which, for however brief a period, may 
happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed 


74 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would 
acquire the home aspect by one night’s lodging of such a 
woman, and would retain it long after her quiet figure had 
disappeared into the surrounding shade. No less a portion 
of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim, as it 
were, Phoebe’s waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which 
had been untenanted so long—except by spiders, and mice, 
and rats, and ghosts—that it was all overgrown with the 
desolation which watches to obliterate every trace of man’s 
happier hours. What was precisely Phoebe’s process we 
find it impossible to say. She appeared to have no prelimi¬ 
nary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought 
some articles of furniture to light and dragged others into 
the shadow; looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, 
in the course of half an hour, had fully succeeded in throwing 
a kindly and hospitable smile over the apartment. No 
longer ago than the night before, it had resembled nothing 
so much as the old maid’s heart; for there was neither sun¬ 
shine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for 
ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years 
gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber. 

There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable 
charm. The bedchamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very 
great and varied experience, as a scene of human life: the 
joy of bridal nights had throbbed itself away here; new im¬ 
mortals had first drawn earthly breath here; and here old 
people had died. But—whether it were the white roses, or 
whatever the subtile influence might be—a person of delicate 
instinct would have known at once that it was now a 
maiden’s bedchamber, and had been purified of all former 
evil and sorrow by her sweet brekth and happy thoughts. 
Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful ones, 
had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the chamber in 
its stead. 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 


75 


After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phoebe 
emerged from her chamber, with a purpose to descend again 
into the garden. Besides the rose-bush, she had observed 
several other species of flowers growing there in a wilderness 
of neglect, and obstructing one another’s development (as is 
often the parallel case in human society) by their unedu¬ 
cated entanglement and confusion. At the head of the 
stairs, however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, 
invited her into a room which she would probably have 
called her boudoir, had her education embraced any such 
French phrase. It was strewn about with a few old books, 
and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on 
one side, a large, black article of furniture, of very strange 
appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phoebe was a 
harpsichord. It looked more like a coffin than anything else; 
and, indeed,—not having been played upon, or opened, for 
years,—there must have been a vast deal of dead music in 
it, stifled for want of air. Human finger was hardly known 
to have touched its chords since the days of Alice Pyncheon, 
who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in 
Europe. 

Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself 
taking a chair near by, looked as earnestly at Phoebe’s trim 
little figure as if she expected to see right into its springs 
and motive secrets. 

“Cousin Phoebe,” said she, at last, “I really can’t see my 
way clear to keep you with me.” 

These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness 
with which they may strike the reader; for the two relatives, 
in a talk before bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of 
mutual understanding. Hepzibah knew enough to enable 
her to appreciate the circumstances (resulting from the sec¬ 
ond marriage of the girl’s mother) which made it desirable 
for Phoebe to establish herself in another home. Nor did she 


76 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


misinterpret Phoebe’s character, and the genial activity per¬ 
vading it,—one of the most valuable traits of the true New 
England woman,—which had impelled her forth, as might 
be said, to seek her fortune, but with a self-respecting pur¬ 
pose to confer as much benefit as she could anywise receive. 
As one of her nearest kindred, she had naturally betaken 
herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself on her 
cousin’s protection, but only for a visit of a week or two, 
which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove for 
the happiness of both. 

To Hepzibah’s blunt observation, therefore, Phoebe re¬ 
plied, as frankly, and more cheerfully. 

“Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,” said she. “But 
I really think we may suit one another much better than 
you suppose.” 

“You are a nice girl,—I see it plainly,” continued Hep¬ 
zibah; “and it is not any question as to that point which 
makes me hesitate. But, Phoebe, this house of mine is but 
a melancholy place for a young person to be in. It lets in 
the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the garret and 
upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in the 
sunshine! And as for myself, you see what I am,—a dismal 
and lonesome old woman (for I begin to call myself old, 
Phoebe), whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the best, 
and whose spirits are as bad as can be. I cannot make 
your life pleasant, Cousin Phoebe, neither can I so much 
as give you bread to eat.” 

“You will find me a cheerful little body,” answered 
Phoebe, smiling, and yet with a kind of gentle dignity; “and 
I mean to earn my bread. You know I have not been 
brought up a Pyncheon. A girl learns many things in 
a New England village ” 

“Ah! Phoebe,” said Hepzibah, sighing, “your knowledge 
would do but little for you here! And then it is a wretched 


] 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 


77 


thought that you should fling away your young days in a 
place like this. Those cheeks would not be so rosy after 
a month or two. Look at my face!”— : and, indeed, the 
contrast was very striking,—“you see how pale I am! It 
is my idea that the dust and continual decay of these old 
houses are unwholesome for the lungs.” 

“There is the garden,—the flowers to be taken care of,” 
observed Phoebe. “I should keep myself healthy with 
exercise in the open air.” 

“And, after all, child,” exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly 
rising, as if to dismiss the subject, “it is not for me to say 
who shall be a guest or inhabitant of the old Pyncheon 
House. Its master is coming.” 

“Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?” asked Phoebe, in sur¬ 
prise. 

“Judge Pyncheon!” answered her cousin, angrily. “He 
will hardly cross the threshold while I live! No, no! But, 
Phoebe, you shall see the face of him I speak of.” 

She went in quest of the miniature already described, and 
returned with it in her hand. Giving it to Phoebe, she 
watched her features narrowly, and with a certain jealousy 
as to the mode in which the girl would show herself affected 
by the picture. 

“How do you like the face?” asked Hepzibah. 

“It is handsome!—it is very beautiful!” said Phoebe, ad¬ 
miringly. “It is as sweet a face as a man’s can be, or ought 
to be. It has something of a child’s expression,—and yet 
not childish,—only one feels so very kindly towards him! 
He ought never to suffer anything. One would bear much 
for the sake of sparing him toil or sorrow. Who is it, 
Cousin Hepzibah?” 

“Did you never hear,” whispered her cousin, bending 
towards her, “of Clifford Pyncheon?” 

“Never! I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except 


78 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES 


yourself and our cousin Jaffrey,” answered Phoebe. “And 
yet I seem to have heard the name of Clifford Pyncheon. 
Yes!—from my father or my mother; but has he not been 
a long while dead?” 

“Well, well, child, perhaps he has!” said Hepzibah, with 
a sad, hollow laugh; “but, in old houses like this, you know, 
dead people are very apt to come back again! We shall 
see. And, Cousin Phoebe, since, after all that I have said, 
your courage does not fail you, we will not part so soon. 
You are welcome, my child, for the present, to such a home 
as your kinswoman can offer you.” 

With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a 
hospitable purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek. 

They now went below stairs, where Phoebe—not so much 
assuming the office as attracting it to herself, by the mag¬ 
netism of innate fitness—took the most active part in pre¬ 
paring breakfast. The mistress of the house, meanwhile, 
as is usual with persons of her stiff and unmalleable cast, 
stood mostly aside; willing to lend her aid, yet conscious 
that her natural inaptitude would be likely to impede the 
business in hand. Phoebe, and the fire that boiled the tea¬ 
kettle, were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their 
respective offices. Hepzibah gazed forth from her habitual 
sluggishness, the necessary result of long solitude, as from 
another sphere. She could not help being interested, how¬ 
ever, and even amused, at the readiness with which her new 
inmate adapted herself to the circumstances, and brought 
the house, moreover, and all its rusty old appliances, into a 
suitableness for her purposes. Whatever she did, too, was 
done without conscious effort, and with frequent outbreaks 
of song, which were exceedingly pleasant to the ear. This 
natural tunefulness made Phoebe seem like a bird in a 
shadowy tree; or conveyed the idea that the stream of life 
warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes warbles 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 


79 


through a pleasant little dell. It betokened the cheeriness 
of an active temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, 
therefore, rendering it beautiful; it was a New England 
trait,—the stem old stuff of Puritanism with a gold thread 
in the web. 

Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons with the 
family crest upon them, and a china tea-set painted over 
with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast, in as 
grotesque a landscape. These pictured people were odd hu¬ 
morists, in a world of their own,—a world of vivid bril¬ 
liancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although 
the teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom 
itself of tea-drinking. 

“Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these 
cups, when she was married,” said Hepzibah to Phoebe. 
“She was a Davenport, of a good family. They were almost 
the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if one of them 
were to be broken, my heart would break with it. But it 
is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I re¬ 
member what my heart has gone through without breaking.” 

The cups—not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah's 
youth—had contracted no small burden of dust, which 
Phoebe washed away with so much care and delicacy as to 
satisfy even the proprietor of this invaluable china. 

“What a nice little housewife you are!” exclaimed the 
latter, smiling, and, at the same time, frowning so pro¬ 
digiously that the smile was sunshine under a thundercloud. 
“Do you do other things as well? Are you as good at your 
book as you are at washing teacups?” 

“Not quite, I am afraid,” said Phoebe, laughing at the 
form of Hepzibah's question. “But I was schoolmistress 
for the little children in our district last summer, and might 
have been so still.” 

“Ah! Tis all very well! ” observed the maiden lady, draw- 


80 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

ing herself up. “But these things must have come to you 
with your mother’s blood. I never knew a Pyncheon that 
had any turn for them.” 

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are 
generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies 
than of their available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native 
inapplicability, so to speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful 
purpose. She regarded it as an hereditary trait; and so, 
perhaps, it was, but, unfortunately, a morbid one, such as 
is often generated in families that remain long above the 
surface of society. 

Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang 
sharply, and Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final 
cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that was truly 
piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful occupation, the 
second day is generally worse than the first; we return to 
the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our 
limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied herself of 
the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly 
obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it might, the sound 
always smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly. 
And especially now, while, with her crested teaspoons and 
antique china, she was flattering herself with ideas of gen¬ 
tility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination to confront a 
customer. 

“Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!” cried Phoebe, 
starting lightly up. “I am shop-keeper to-day.” 

“You, child!” exclaimed Hepzibah. “What can a little 
country-girl know of such matters?” 

“Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our 
village store,” said Phoebe. “And I have had a table at a 
fancy fair, and made better sales than anybody. These 
things are not to be learnt; they depend upon a knack that 
comes, I suppose,” added she, smiling, “with one’s mother’s 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 81 

blood. You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman 
as I am a housewife!” 

The old gentlewoman stole behind Phoebe, and peeped 
from the passage-way into the shop, to note how she would 
manage her undertaking. It was a case of some intricacy. 
A very ancient woman, in a white short gown and a green 
petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and 
what looked like a nightcap on her head, had brought a 
quantity of yam to barter for the commodities of the shop. 
She was probably the very last person in town who still 
kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in constant revolu¬ 
tion. It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow 
tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phoebe, 
mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still better to 
contrast their figures,—so light and bloomy,—so decrepit 
and dusky,—with only the counter betwixt them, in one 
sense, but more than threescore years, in another. As for 
the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and craft pitted against 
native truth and sagacity. 

“Was not that well done?” asked Phoebe, laughing, when 
the customer was gone. 

“Nicely done, indeed, child!” answered Hepzibah. “I 
could not have gone through with it nearly so well. As you 
say, it must be a knack that belongs to you on the mother’s 
side.” 

It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons 
too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling 
world regard the real actors in life’s stirring scenes; so 
genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make 
it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active 
and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which 
they choose to deem higher and more important. Thus, 
Hepzibah was well content to acknowledge Phoebe’s vastly 
superior gifts as a shop-keeper; she listened, with compliant 


82 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


ear, to her suggestion of various methods whereby the influx 
of trade might be increased, and rendered profitable, with¬ 
out a hazardous outlay of capital. She consented that the 
village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid and in 
cakes; and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous 
to the palate, and of rare stomachic virtues; and more¬ 
over, should bake and exhibit for sale some little spice- 
cakes, which whosoever tasted would longingly desire to 
taste again. All such proofs of a ready mind and skilful 
handiwork were highly acceptable to the aristocratic huck- 
steress, so long as she could murmur to herself with a grim 
smile, and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed 
wonder, pity, and growing affection,— 

“What a nice little body she is! If she could only be a 
lady, too!—but that’s impossible! Phoebe is no Pyncheon. 
She takes everything from her mother.” 

As to Phoebe’s not being a lady, or whether she were a 
lady or no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but 
which could hardly have come up for judgment at all in 
any fair and healthy mind. Out of New England, it would 
be impossible to meet with a person combining so many 
lady-like attributes with so many others that form no neces¬ 
sary (if compatible) part of the character. She shocked no 
canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with herself, 
and never jarred against surrounding circumstances. Her 
figure, to be sure,—so small as to be almost childlike, and so 
elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to it than rest,— 
would hardly have suited one’s idea of a countess. Neither 
did her face—with the brown ringlets on either side, and 
the slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and 
the clear shade of tan, and the half a dozen freckles, friendly 
remembrancers of the April sun and breeze—precisely give 
us a right to call her beautiful. But there was both luster and 
depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as graceful as a 




MAY AND NOVEMBER 


83 


bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about 
the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through 
a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that 
dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh. Instead 
of discussing her claim to rank among ladies, it would be 
preferable to regard Phoebe as the example of feminine grace 
and availability combined, in a state of society, if there were 
any such, where ladies did not exist. There it should be 
woman’s office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and 
to gild them all, the very homeliest,—were it even the scour¬ 
ing of pots and kettles,—with an atmosphere of loveliness 
and joy. 

Such was the sphere of Phoebe. To find the born and 
educated lady, on the other hand, we need look no farther 
than Hepzibah, our forlorn old maid, in her rustling and 
rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and ridiculous con¬ 
sciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to princely 
territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her recollec¬ 
tions, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsi¬ 
chord, and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry- 
stitch on her sampler. It was a fair parallel . between new 
Plebeianism and old Gentility. 

It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of 
the Seven Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still cer¬ 
tainly looked, must have shown a kind of cheerfulness glim¬ 
mering through its dusky windows as Phoebe passed to and 
fro in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain 
how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware 
of the girl’s presence. There was a great run of custom, set¬ 
ting steadily in, from about ten o’clock until towards noon,— 
relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but recommencing in 
the afternoon, and, finally, dying away half an hour or so 
before the long day’s sunset. One of the stanchest patrons 
was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and the 


84 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


elephant, who to-day had signalized his omnivorous prowess 
by swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phoebe 
laughed, as she summed up her aggregate of sales upon the 
the slate; while Hepzibah, first drawing on a pair of silk 
gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper 
coin, not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into 
the till. 

“We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!” cried the 
little saleswoman. “The gingerbread figures are all gone, 
and so are those Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most of our 
other playthings. There has been constant inquiry for 
cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles, and trumpets, 
and jew’s-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have asked 
for molasses-candy. And we must contrive to get a peck of 
russet apples, late in the season as it is. But, dear cousin, 
what an enormous heap of copper! Positively a copper 
mountain! ” 

“Well done! well done! well done!” quoth Uncle Venner, 
who had taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop 
several times in the course of the day. “Here’s a girl that 
will never end her days at my farm! Bless my eyes, what 
a brisk little soul!” 

“Yes, Phoebe is a nice girl!” said Hepzibah, with a scowl 
of austere approbation. “But, Uncle Venner, you have 
known the family a great many years. Can you tell me 
whether there ever was a Pyncheon whom she takes 
after?” 

“I don’t believe there ever was,” answered the venerable 
man. “At any rate, it never was my luck to see her like 
among them, nor, for that matter, anywhere else. I’ve 
seen a great deal of the world, not only in people’s kitchens 
and back-yards, but at the street-corners, and on the wharves, 
and in other places where my business calls me; and I’m 
free to say, Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a human 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 85 

creature do her work so much like one of God’s angels as 
this child Phoebe does! ” 

Uncle Venner’s eulogium, if it appear rather too high- 
strained for the person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a 
sense in which it was both subtile and true. There was a 
spiritual quality in Phoebe’s activity. The life of the long 
and busy day—spent in occupations that might so easily 
have taken a squalid and ugly aspect—had been made 
pleasant, and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with 
which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of her 
character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the 
easy and flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil, but let 
their good works grow out of them; and so did Phoebe. 

The two relatives—the young maid and the old one— 
found time before nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to 
make rapid advances towards affection and confidence. A 
recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays remarkable frank¬ 
ness, and at least temporary affability, on being absolutely 
cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse; 
like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to 
bless you when once overcome. 

The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfac¬ 
tion in leading Phoebe from room to room of the house, and 
recounting the traditions with which, as we may say, the 
walls were lugubriously frescoed. She showed the indenta¬ 
tions made by the lieutenant-governor’s sword-hilt in the 
door-panels of the apartment where old Colonel Pyncheon, 
a dead host, had received his affrighted visitors with an 
awful frown. The dusky terror of that frown, Hepzibah 
observed, was thought to be lingering ever since in the 
passage-way. She bade Phoebe step into one of the tall 
chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon terri¬ 
tory at the eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid 
her finger, there existed a silver-mine, the locality of which 


86 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

was precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Colonel 
Pyncheon himself, but only to be made known when the 
family claim should be recognized by government. Thus it 
was for the interest of all New England that the Pyncheons 
should have justice done them. She told, too, how that 
there was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English 
guineas hidden somewhere about the house, or in the cellar, 
or possibly in the garden. 

“If you should happen to find it, Phoebe/’ said Hepzibah, 
glancing aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, “we will 
tie up the shop-bell for good and all! ” 

“Yes, dear cousin,” answered Phoebe; “but in the mean¬ 
time, I hear somebody ringing it!” 

When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather 
vaguely, and at great length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon, 
who had been exceedingly beautiful and accomplished in 
her lifetime, a hundred years ago. The fragrance of her 
rich and delightful character still lingered about the place 
where she had lived, as a dried rosebud scents the drawer 
where it has withered and perished. This lovely Alice had 
met with some great and mysterious calamity, and had 
grown thin and white, and gradually faded out of the world. 
But, even now, she was supposed to haunt the House of the 
Seven Gables, and, a great many times,—especially when one 
of the Pyncheons was to die,—she had been heard playing 
sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord. One of these 
tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual touch, had 
been written down by an amateur of music; it was so ex¬ 
quisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could bear to 
hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them 
know the still profounder sweetness of it. 

“Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?” in¬ 
quired Phoebe. 

“The very same,” said Hepzibah. “It was Alice Pyn- 


MAY AND NOVEMBER 


87 


cheon’s harpsichord. When I was learning music, my father 
would never let me open it. So, as I could only play on 
my teacher’s instrument, I have forgotten all my music 
long ago.” 

Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk 
about the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well- 
meaning and orderly young man, and in narrow circum¬ 
stances, she had permitted to take up his residence in one 
of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr. Holgrave, 
she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest 
companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed 
in linen blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting 
garments; reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner 
of cross-looking philanthropists; community-men, and come- 
outers, as Hepzibah believed, who acknowledged no law, and 
ate no solid food, but lived on the scent of other people’s 
cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare. As for the 
daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, 
the other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild 
and disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like 
associates. For her own part, she had reason to believe that 
he practised animal magnetism, and, if such things were in 
fashion in this day and age, should be apt to suspect him 
of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome 
chamber. 

“But, dear cousin,” said Phoebe, “if the young man is so 
dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he does nothing 
worse, he may set the house on fire!” 

“Why, sometimes,” answered Hepzibah, “I have seriously 
made it a question, whether I ought not to send him away. 
But, with all his oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and 
has such a way of taking hold of one’s mind, that, without 
exactly liking him (for I don’t know enough of the young 
man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him entirely. A 


88 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so 
much alone as I do.” 

“But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!” remonstrated 
Phoebe, a part of whose essence it was to keep within the 
limits of law. 

“Oh!” said Hepzibah, carelessly,—for, formal as she was, 
still, in her life’s experience, she had gnashed her teeth 
against human law,—“I suppose he has a law of his own!” 


“V 




VI 


maule’s well 

After an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into 
the garden. The enclosure had formerly been very extensive, 
but was now contracted within small compass, and hemmed 
about, partly by high wooden fences, and partly by the out¬ 
buildings of houses that stood on another street. In its 
center was a grass-plat, surrounding a ruinous little struc¬ 
ture, which showed just enough of its original design to indi¬ 
cate that it had once been a summer-house. , A hop-vine, 
springing from last year’s root, was beginning to clamber 
over it, but would be long in covering the roof with its 
green mantle. Three of the seven gables either fronted or 
looked sideways, with a dark solemnity of aspect, down into 
the garden. 

The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a long 
period of time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of flowers, 
and the stalks and seed-vessels of vagrant and lawless plants, 
more useful after their death than ever while flaunting in 
the sun. The evil of these departed years would naturally 
have sprung up again, in such rank weeds (symbolic of the 
transmitted vices of society) as are always prone to root 
themselves about human dwellings. Phoebe saw, however, 
that their growth must have been checked by a degree of 
careful labor, bestowed daily and systematically on the 
garden. The white double rose-bush had evidently been 
propped up anew against the house since the commence- 

89 


90 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


ment of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, 
which, except a row of currant-bushes, constituted the only 
varieties of fruit, bore marks of the recent amputation of 
several superfluous or defective limbs. There were also a 
few species of antique and hereditary flowers, in no very 
flourishing condition, but scrupulously weeded; as if some 
person, either out of love or curiosity, had been anxious to 
bring them to such perfection as they were capable of at¬ 
taining. The remainder of the garden presented a well- 
selected assortment of esculent vegetables, in a praiseworthy 
state of advancement. Summer squashes, almost in their 
golden blossom; cucumbers, now evincing a tendency to 
spread away from the main stock, and ramble far and 
wide; two or three rows of string-beans, and as many more 
that were about to festoon themselves on poles; tomatoes, 
occupying a site so sheltered and sunny that the plants were 
already gigantic, and promised an early and abundant 
harvest. 

Phoebe wondered whose care and toil it could have been 
that had planted these vegetables, and kept the soil so clean 
and orderly. Not surely her cousin Hepzibah’s, who had no 
taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment of cultivating 
flowers, and—with her recluse habits, and tendency to shelter 
herself within the dismal shadow of the house—would hardly 
have come forth under the speck of open sky to weed and 
hoe among the fraternity of beans and squashes. 

It being her first day of complete estrangement from rural 
Objects, Phoebe found an unexpected charm in this little 
nook of grass, and foliage, and aristocratic flowers, and 
plebeian vegetables. The eye of Heaven seemed to look 
down into it pleasantly, and with a peculiar smile, as if glad 
to perceive that Nature, elsewhere overwhelmed, and driven 
out of the dusty town, had here been able to retain a 
breathing-place. The spot acquired a somewhat wilder grace, 


MAULE’S WELL 


91 


and yet a very gentle one, from the fact that a pair of 
robins had built their nest in the pear-tree, and were making 
themselves exceedingly busy and happy in the dark intricacy 
of its boughs. Bees, too,—strange to say,—had thought it 
worth their while to come hither, possibly from the range 
of hives beside some farm-house miles away. How many 
aerial voyages might they have made, in quest of honey, or 
honey-laden, betwixt dawn and sunset! Yet, late as it now 
was, there still arose a pleasant hum out of one or two of the 
squash-blossoms, in the depths of which these bees were 
plying their golden labor. There was one other object in 
the garden which Nature might fairly claim as her inalien¬ 
able property, in spite of whatever man could do to render 
it his own. This was a fountain, set around with a rim of 
old mossy stones, and paved, in its bed, with what appeared 
to be a sort of mosaic-work of variously colored pebbles. 
The play and slight agitation of the water, in its upward 
gush, wrought magically with these variegated pebbles, and 
made a continually shifting apparition of quaint figures, van¬ 
ishing too suddenly to be definable. Thence, swelling over 
the rim of moss-grown stones, the water stole away under 
the fence, through what we regret to call a gutter, rather 
than a channel. 

Nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop of very rev¬ 
erend antiquity that stood in the farther corner of the 
garden, not a great way from the fountain. It now con¬ 
tained only Chanticleer, his two wives, and a solitary chicken. 
All of them were pure specimens of a breed which had been 
transmitted down as an heirloom in the Pyncheon family, 
and were said, while in their prime, to have attained almost 
the size of turkeys, and, on the score of delicate flesh, to 
be fit for a prince’s table. In proof of the authenticity of 
this legendary renown, Hepzibah could have exhibited the 
shell of a great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been 


92 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

ashamed of. Be that as it might, the hens were now scarcely 
larger than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, 
and a gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and melancholy 
tone throughout all the variations of their clucking and 
cackling. It was evident that the race had degenerated, like 
many a noble race besides, in consequence of too strict a 
watchfulness to keep it pure. These feathered people had 
existed too long in their distinct variety; a fact of which the 
present representatives, judging by their lugubrious deport¬ 
ment, seemed to be aware. They kept themselves alive, 
unquestionably, and laid now and then an egg, and hatched 
a chicken; not for any pleasure of their own, but that the 
world might not absolutely lose what had once been so admir¬ 
able a breed of fowls. The distinguishing mark of the hens 
was a crest of lamentably scanty growth, in these latter days, 
but so oddly and wickedly analogous to Hepzibah’s turban, 
that Phoebe—to the poignant distress of her conscience, but 
none the less inevitably—was led to fancy a general re¬ 
semblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable 
relative. 

The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of bread, 
cold potatoes, and other such scraps as were suitable to the 
accommodating appetite of fowls. Returning, she gave a 
peculiar call, which they seemed to recognize. The chicken 
crept through the pales of the coop and ran, with some show 
of liveliness, to her feet; while Chanticleer and the ladies 
of his household regarded her with queer, sidelong glances, 
and then croaked one to another, as if communicating their 
sage opinions of her character. So wise, as well as antique, 
was their aspect, as to give color to the idea, not merely that 
they were the descendants of a time-honored race, but that 
they had existed, in their individual capacity, ever since the 
House of the Seven Gables was founded, and were somehow 
mixed up with its destiny. They were a species of tutelary 


MAULE’S WELL 


93 


sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered differently 
from most other guardian angels. 

“Here, you odd little chicken!” said Phoebe; “here are 
some nice crumbs for you!” 

The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable in 
appearance as its mother,—possessing, indeed, the whole 
antiquity of its progenitors in miniature,—mustered vivacity 
enough to flutter upward and alight on Phoebe’s shoulder. 

“That little fowl pays you a high compliment!” said a 
voice behind Phoebe. 

Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young 
man, who had found access into the garden by a door open¬ 
ing out of another gable than that whence she had emerged. 
He held a hoe in his hand, and, while Phoebe was gone in 
quest of the crumbs, had begun to busy himself with draw¬ 
ing up fresh earth about the roots of the tomatoes. 

“The chicken really treats you like an old acquaintance,” 
continued he, in a quiet way, while a smile made his face 
pleasanter than Phoebe at first fancied it. “Those venerable 
personages in the coop, too, seem very affably disposed. 
You are lucky to be in their good graces so soon! They 
have known me much longer, but never honor me with any 
familiarity, though hardly a day passes without my bringing 
them food. Miss Hepzibah, I suppose, will interweave the 
fact with her other traditions, and set it down that the fowls 
know you to be a Pyncheon! ” 

“The secret is,” said Phoebe, smiling, “that I have learned 
how to talk with hens and chickens.” 

“Ah, but these hens,” answered the young man,—“these 
hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the 
vulgar language of a barn-yard fowl. I prefer to think— 
and so would Miss Hepzibah—that they recognize the family 
tone. For you are a Pyncheon?” 

“My name is Phoebe Pyncheon,” said the girl, with a 


94 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


manner of some reserve; for she was aware that her new 
acquaintance could be no other than the daguerreotypist, of 
whose lawless propensities the old maid had given her a dis¬ 
agreeable idea. “I did not know that my cousin Hep- 
zibah’s garden was under another person’s care.” 

“Yes,” said Holgrave, “I dig, and hoe, and weed, in this 
old black earth, for the sake of refreshing myself with what 
little nature and simplicity may be left in it, after men have 
so long sown and reaped here. I turn up the earth by way 
of pastime. My sober occupation, so far as I have any, is 
with a lighter material. In short, I make pictures out of sun¬ 
shine; and, not to be too much dazzled with my own trade, 
I have prevailed with Miss Hepzibah to let me lodge in 
one of these dusky gables. It is like a bandage over one’s 
eyes, to come into it. But would you like to see a specimen 
of my productions?” 

“A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?” asked Phoebe, 
with less reserve; for, in spite of prejudice, her own youth¬ 
fulness sprang forward to meet his. “I don’t much like 
pictures of that sort,—they are so hard and stern; besides 
dodging away from the eye, and trying to escape altogether. 
They are conscious of looking very unamiable, I suppose, 
and therefore hate to be seen.” 

“If you would permit me,” said the artist, looking at 
Phoebe, “I should like to try whether the daguerreotype can 
bring out disagreeable traits on a perfectly amiable face. 
But there certainly is truth in what you have said. Most 
of my likenesses do look unamiable; but the very sufficient 
reason, I fancy, is, because the originals are so. There is a 
wonderful insight in Heaven’s broad and simple sunshine. 
While we give it credit only for depicting the merest 
surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a 
truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could 
he detect it. There is, at least, no flattery in my humble 


MAULE’S WELL 


95 


line of art. Now, here is a likeness which I have taken over 
and over again, and still with no better result. Yet the 
original wears, to common eyes, a very different expression. 
It would gratify me to have your judgment on this character.” 

He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature in a morocco 
case. Phoebe merely glanced at it, and gave it back. 

“I know the face,” she replied; “for its stern eye has been 
following me about all day. It is my Puritan ancestor, who 
hangs yonder in the parlor. To be sure, you have found 
some way of copying the portrait without its black velvet 
cap and gray beard, and have given him a modern coat and 
satin cravat, instead of his cloak and band. I don’t think 
him improved by your alterations.” 

“You would have seen other differences had you looked 
a little longer,” said Holgrave, laughing, yet apparently 
much struck. “I can assure you that this is a modern 
face, and one which you will very probably meet. Now, 
the remarkable point is, that the original wears, to the 
world’s eye,—and, for aught I know, to his most intimate 
friends,—an exceedingly pleasant countenance, indicative 
of benevolence, openness of heart, sunny good-humor, and 
other praiseworthy qualities of that cast. The sun, as you 
see, tells quite another story, and will not be coaxed out of 
it, after half a dozen patient attempts on my part. Here 
we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and, withal, 
cold as ice. Look at that eye! Would you like to be at 
its mercy? At that mouth! Could it ever smile? And 
yet, if you could only see the benign smile of the original! 
It is so much the more unfortunate, as he is a public character 
of some eminence, and the likeness was intended to be en¬ 
graved.” 

“Well, I don’t wish to see it any more,” observed Phoebe, 
turning away her eyes. “It is certainly very like the old 
portrait. But my cousin Hepzibah has another picture,— 


96 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

a miniature. If the original is still in the world, I think he 
might defy the sun to make him look stern and hard.” 

“You have seen that picture, then!” exclaimed the artist, 
with an expression of much interest. “I never did, but have 
a great curiosity to do so. And you judge favorably of 
the face?” 

“There never was a sweeter one,” said Phoebe. “It is 
almost too soft and gentle for a man’s.” 

“Is there nothing wild in the eye?” continued Holgrave, 
so earnestly that it embarrassed Phoebe, as did also the 
quiet freedom with which he presumed on their so recent 
acquaintance. “Is there nothing dark or sinister anywhere? 
Could you not conceive the original to have been guilty of 
a great crime?” 

“It is nonsense,” said Phoebe, a little impatiently, “for us 
to talk about a picture which you have never seen. You 
mistake it for some other. A crime, indeed! Since you are 
a friend of my cousin Hepzibah’s, you should ask her to 
show you the picture.” 

“It will suit my purpose' still better to see the original,” 
replied the daguerreotypist, coolly. “As to his character, 
we need not discuss its points; they have already been settled 
by a competent tribunal, or one which called itself com¬ 
petent. But, stay! Do not go yet, if you please! I have a 
proposition to make you.” 

Phoebe was on the point of retreating, but turned back, 
with some hesitation; for she did not exactly comprehend 
hi^ manner, although, on better observation, its feature 
seemed rather to be lack of ceremony than any approach to 
offensive rudeness. There was an odd kind of authority, 
too, in what he now proceeded to say, rather as if the garden 
were his own than a place to which he was admitted merely 
by Hepzibah’s courtesy. 

“If agreeable to you,” he observed, “it would give me 


MAULE’S WELL 


97 


pleasure to turn over these flowers, and those ancient and 
respectable fowls, to your care. Coming fresh from country 
air and occupations, you will soon feel the need of some such 
out-of-door employment. My own sphere does not so much 
lie among flowers. You can trim and tend them, therefore, 
as you please; and I will ask only the least trifle of a blossom, 
now and then, in exchange for all the good, honest kitchen 
vegetables with which I propose to enrich Miss Hepzibah’s 
table. So we will be fellow-laborers, somewhat on the com¬ 
munity system.” 

Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance, 
Phoebe accordingly betook herself to weeding a flower-bed, 
but busied herself still more with cogitations respecting this 
young man, with whom she so unexpectedly found herself 
on terms approaching to familiarity. She did not altogether 
like him. His character perplexed the little country-girl, as 
it might a more practised observer; for, while the tone of 
his conversation had generally been playful, the impression 
left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except as his youth 
modified it, almost sternness. She rebelled, as it were, 
against a certain magnetic element in the artist’s nature, 
which he exercised towards her, possibly without being con¬ 
scious of it. 

After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shadows 
of the fruit-trees and the surrounding buildings, threw an 
obscurity over the garden. 

“There-,” said Holgrave, “it is time to give over work! 
That last stroke of the hoe has cut off a bean-stalk. Good¬ 
night, Miss Phoebe Pyncheon! Any bright day, if you will 
put one of those rosebuds in your hair, and come to my 
rooms in Central Street, I will seize the purest ray of sun¬ 
shine, and make a picture of the flower and its wearer.” 

He retired towards his own solitary gable, but turned 
his head, on reaching the door, and called to Phoebe, with a 


98 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

tone which certainly had laughter in it, yet which seemed to 
be more than half in earnest. 

“Be careful not to drink at Maule’s well!” said he. 
“Neither drink nor bathe your face in it!” 

“Maule’s well!” answered Phoebe. “Is that it with the rim 
of mossy stones? I have no thought of drinking there,— 
but why not?” 

“Oh,” rejoined the daguerreotypist, “because, like an old 
lady’s cup of tea, it is water bewitched! ” 

He vanished; and Phoebe, lingering a moment, saw a 
glimmering light, and then the steady beam of a lamp, in 
a chamber of the gable. On returning into Hepzibah’s 
apartment of the house, she found the low-studded parlor 
so dim and dusky that her eyes could not penetrate the 
interior. She was indistinctly aware, however, that the 
gaunt figure of the old gentlewoman was sitting in one of 
the straight-backed chairs, a little withdrawn from the win¬ 
dow, the faint gleam of which showed the blanched paleness 
of her cheek, turned sideway towards a corner. 

“Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?” she asked. 

“Do, if you please, my dear child,” answered Hepzibah. 
“But put it on the table in the corner of the passage. My 
eyes are weak; and I can seldom bear the lamplight on 
them.” 

What an instrument is the human voice! How wonder¬ 
fully responsive to every emotion of the human soul! In 
Hepzibah’s tone, at that moment, there was a certain rich 
depth and moisture, as if the words, commonplace as they 
were, had been steeped in the warmth of her heart. Again, 
while lighting the lamp in the kitchen, Phoebe fancied that 
her cousin spoke to her. 

“In a moment, cousin! ” answered the girl. “These matches 
just glimmer, and go out.” 

But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed to 


MAULE’S WELL 


99 


hear the murmur of an unknown voice. It was strangely 
indistinct, however, and less like articulate words than an 
unshaped sound, such as would be the utterance of feeling 
and sympathy, rather than of the intellect. So vague was 
it, that its impression or echo in Phoebe’s mind was that of 
unreality. She concluded that she must have mistaken some 
other sound for that of the human voice; or else that it was 
altogether her fancy. 

She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again entered 
the parlor. Hepzibah’s form, though its sable outline mingled 
with the dusk, was now less imperfectly visible. In the 
remoter parts of the room, however, its walls being so ill 
adapted to reflect light, there was nearly the same obscurity 
as before. 

“Cousin,” said Phoebe, “did you speak to me just now?” 

“No, child!” replied Hepzibah. 

Fewer words than before, but with the same mysterious 
music in them! Mellow, melancholy, yet not mournful, the 
tone seemed to gush up out of the deep well of Hepzibah’s 
heart, all steeped in its profoundest emotion. There was a 
tremor in it, too, that—as all strong feeling is electric— 
partly communicated itself to Phoebe. The girl sat silently 
for a moment. But soon, her senses being very acute, she 
became conscious of an irregular respiration in an obscure 
corner of the room. Her physical organization, moreover, 
being at once delicate and healthy, gave her a perception, 
operating with almost the effect of a spiritual medium, that 
somebody was near at hand. 

“My dear cousin,” asked she, overcoming an indefinable 
reluctance, “is there not some one in the room with us?” 

“Phoebe, my dear little girl,” said Hepzibah, after a mo¬ 
ment’s pause, “you were up betimes, and have been busy all 
day. Pray go to bed; for I am sure you must need rest. I 
will sit in the parlor awhile, and collect my thoughts. It 


100 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

has been my custom for more years, child, than you have 
lived! ” 

While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stept forward, 
kissed Phoebe, and pressed her to her heart, which beat 
against the girl’s bosom with a strong, high, and tumultuous 
swell. How came there to be so much love in this desolate 
old heart, that it could afford to well over thus abundantly? 

“Good night, cousin,” said Phoebe, strangely affected by 
Hepzibah’s manner. “If you begin to love me, I am glad! ” 

She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall asleep, 
nor then very profoundly. At some uncertain period in the 
depths of night, and, as it were, through the thin veil of a 
dream, she was conscious of a footstep mounting the stairs 
heavily, but not with force and decision. The voice of Hep- 
zibah, with a hush through it, was going up along with the 
footsteps; and, again, responsive to her cousin’s voice, 
Phoebe heard that strange, vague murmur, which might be 
likened to an indistinct shadow of human utterance. 


VII 


THE GUEST 

When Phoebe awoke,—which she did with the early twit¬ 
tering of the conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,— 
she heard movements below stairs, and, hastening down, 
found Hepzibah already in the kitchen. She stood by a 
window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose, as 
if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with 
its contents, since her imperfect vision made it not very 
easy to read them. If any volume could have manifested its 
essential wisdom in the mode suggested, it would certainly 
have been the one now in Hepzibah’s hand; and the kitchen, 
in such an event, would forthwith have steamed with the 
fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges, 
puddings, cakes, and Christmas pies, in all manner of 
elaborate mixture and concoction. It was a cookery book, 
full of innumerable old fashions of English dishes, and il¬ 
lustrated with engravings, which represented the arrange¬ 
ments of the table at such banquets as it might have befitted 
a nobleman to give in the great hall of his castle. And, amid 
these rich and potent devices of the culinary art (not one 
of which, probably, had been tested, within the memory of 
any man’s grandfather), poor Hepzibah was seeking for 
some nimble little titbit, which, with what skill she had, and 
such materials as were at hand, she might toss up for 
breakfast. 

Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume, 

101 


102 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


and inquired of Phoebe whether old Speckle, as she called 
one of the hens, had laid an egg the preceding day. Phoebe 
ran to see, but returned without the expected treasure in 
her hand. At that instant, however, the blast of a fish- 
dealer’s conch was heard, announcing his approach along 
the street. With energetic raps at the shop-window, Hep- 
zibah summoned the man in, and made purchase of what 
he warranted as the finest mackerel in his cart, and as fat 
a one as ever he felt with his finger so early in the season. 
Requesting Phoebe to roast some coffee,—which she casually 
observed was the real Mocha, and so long kept that each of 
the small berries ought to be worth its weight in gold,—the 
maiden lady heaped fuel into the vast receptacle of the 
ancient fireplace in such quantity as soon to drive the linger¬ 
ing dusk out of the kitchen. The country-girl, willing to 
give her utmost assistance, proposed to make an Indian cake, 
after her mother’s peculiar method, of easy manufacture, 
and which she could vouch for as possessing a richness, and, 
if rightly prepared, a delicacy, unequalled by any other 
mode of breakfast-cake. Hepzibah gladly assenting, the 
kitchen was soon the scene of savory preparation. Per¬ 
chance, amid their proper element of smoke, which eddied 
forth from the ill-constructed chimney, the ghosts of de¬ 
parted cook-maids looked wonderingly on, or peeped down 
the great breadth of the flue, despising the simplicity of the 
projected meal, yet ineffectually pining to thrust their 
shadowy hands into each inchoate dish. The half-starved 
rats, at any rate, stole visibly out of their hiding-places, and 
sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy atmosphere, and 
wistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble. 

Hepzibah had no natural turn for cookery, and, to say the 
truth, had fairly incurred her present meagerness by often 
choosing to go without her dinner rather than be attendant 
on the rotation of the spit, or ebullition of the pot. Her 


THE GUEST 


103 


zeal over the fire, therefore, was quite an heroic test of senti¬ 
ment. It was touching, and positively worthy of tears (if 
Phoebe, the only spectator, except the rats and ghosts afore¬ 
said, had not been better employed than in shedding them), 
to see her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and pro¬ 
ceed to broil the mackerel. Her usually pale cheeks were 
all ablaze with heat and hurry. She watched the fish with as 
much tender care and minuteness of attention as if,—we 
know not how to express it otherwise,—as if her own heart 
were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were in¬ 
volved in its being done precisely to a turn! 

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a 
neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We 
come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when 
our spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than 
at a later period; so that the material delights of the morn¬ 
ing meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any 
very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, 
for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department 
of our nature. The thoughts, too, that run around the ring 
of familiar guests have a piquancy and mirthfulness, and 
oftentimes a vivid truth, which more rarely find their way into 
the elaborate intercourse of dinner. Hepzibah’s small and 
ancient table, supported on its slender and graceful legs, and 
covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to 
be the scene and center of one of the cheerfullest of parties. 
The vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the 
shrine of a barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the Mocha 
might have gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or what¬ 
ever power has scope over a modern breakfast-table. 
Phoebe’s Indian cakes were the sweetest offering of all,—in 
their hue befitting the rustic altars of the innocent and golden 
age,—or, so brightly yellow were they, resembling some 
of the bread which was changed to glistening gold when 


104 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Midas tried to eat it. The butter must not be forgotten, 
—butter which Phoebe herself had churned, in her own 
rural home, and brought it to her cousin as a propitiatory 
gift,—smelling of clover-blossoms, and diffusing the charm 
of pastoral scenery through the dark paneled parlor. All 
this, with the quaint gorgeousness of the old china cups and 
saucers, and the crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug 
(Hepzibah’s only other article of plate, and shaped like the 
rudest porringer)', set out a board at which the stateliest of 
old Colonel Pyncheon’s guests need not have scorned to take 
his place. But the Puritan’s face scowled down out of the 
picture, as if nothing on the table pleased his appetite. 

By way of contributing what grace she could, Phoebe gath¬ 
ered some roses and a few other flowers, possessing either 
scent or beauty, and arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, 
having long ago lost its handle, was so much the fitter for a 
flower-vase. The early sunshine—as fresh as that which 
peeped into Eve’s bower while she and Adam sat at break¬ 
fast there—came twinkling through the branches of the 
pear-tree, and fell quite across the table. All was now 
ready. There were chairs and plates for three. A chair 
and plate for Hepzibah,—the same for Phoebe,—but what 
other guest did her cousin look for? 

Throughout this preparation there had been a constant 
tremor in Hepzibah’s frame; an agitation so powerful that 
Phoebe could see the quivering of her gaunt shadow, as 
thrown by the firelight on the kitchen wall, or by the sun¬ 
shine on the parlor floor. Its manifestations were so various, 
and agreed so little with one another, that the girl knew not 
what to make of it. Sometimes it seemed an ecstasy of 
delight and happiness. At such moments, Hepzibah would 
fling out her arms, and infold Phoebe in them, and kiss her 
cheek as tenderly as ever her mother had; she appeared to 
do so by an inevitable impulse, and as if her bosom were 


THE GUEST 


105 


oppressed with tenderness, of which she must needs pour 
out a little, in order to gain breathing-room. The next 
moment, without any visible cause for the change, her un¬ 
wonted joy shrank back, appalled, as it were, and clothed 
itself in mourning; or it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in 
the dungeon of her heart, where it had long lain chained, 
while a cold, spectral sorrow took the place of the im¬ 
prisoned joy, that was afraid to be enfranchised,—a sorrow 
as black as that was bright. She often broke into a little, 
nervous, hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears 
could be; and forthwith, as if to try which was the most 
touching, a gush of tears would follow; or perhaps the 
laughter and tears came both at once, and surrounded our 
poor Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim 
rainbow. Towards Phoebe, as we have said, she was affec¬ 
tionate,—far tenderer than ever before, in their brief 
acquaintance, except for that one kiss on the preceding 
night,—yet with a continually recurring pettishness and ir¬ 
ritability. She would speak sharply to her; then, throwing 
aside all the starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask 
pardon, and the next instant renew the just-forgiven injury. 

At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took 
Phoebe’s hand in her own trembling one. 

“Bear with me, my dear child,” she cried; “for truly my 
heart is full to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, 
Phoebe, though I speak so roughly! Think nothing of it, 
dearest child! By and by, I shall be kind, and only kind! ” 

“My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has hap¬ 
pened?” asked Phoebe, with a sunny and tearful sympathy. 
“What is it that moves you so?” 

“Hush! hush! He is coming!” whispered Hepzibah, 
hastily wiping her eyes. “Let him see you first, Phoebe; for 
you are young and rosy, and cannot help letting a smile 
break out whether or no. He always liked bright faces! 


106 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry on it. He 
never could abide tears. There; draw the curtain a little, 
so that the shadow may fall across his side of the table! 
But let there be a good deal of sunshine, too; for he never 
was fond of gloom, as some people are. He has had but 
little sunshine in his life,—poor Clifford,—and, oh, what a 
black shadow! Poor, poor Clifford!” 

Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather 
to her own heart than to Phoebe, the old gentlewoman 
stepped on tiptoe about the room, making such arrange¬ 
ments as suggested themselves af the crisis. 

Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above 
stairs. Phoebe recognized it as the same which had passed 
upward, as through her dream, in the night-time. The ap¬ 
proaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared to pause 
at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice in 
the descent; he paused again at the foot. Each time, the 
delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a for¬ 
getfulness of the purpose which had set him in motion, or 
as if the person’s feet came involuntarily to a stand-still 
because the motive-power was too feeble to sustain his 
progress. Finally, he made a long pause at the threshold 
of the parlor. He took hold of the knob of the door; then 
loosened his grasp without opening it. Hepzibah, her hands 
convulsively clasped, stood gazing at the entrance. 

“Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don’t look so! ” said Phoebe, 
trembling; for her cousin’s emotion, and this mysteriously 
reluctant step, made her feel as if a ghost were coming into 
the room. “You really frighten me! Is something awful 
going to happen?” 

“Hush!” whispered Hepzibah. “Be cheerful! whatever 
may happen, be nothing but cheerful!” 

The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that Hep¬ 
zibah, unable to endure the suspense, rushed forward, threw 


THE GUEST 


107 


open the door, and led in the stranger by the hand. At the 
first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an old- 
fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his 
gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite 
overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, 
and stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief in¬ 
spection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his foot¬ 
step must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly, 
and with as indefinite an aim as a child’s first journey across 
a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were 
no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed 
for a free and determined gait. It was the spirit of the man 
that could not walk. The expression of his countenance— 
while, notwithstanding, it had the light of reason in it— 
seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, 
and feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame 
which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; 
we gaze at it more intently than if it were a positive 
blaze, gushing vividly upward,—more intently, but with 
a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle 
itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once ex¬ 
tinguished. 

For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood 
still, retaining Hepzibah’s hand, instinctively, as a child does 
that of the grown person who guides it. He saw Phoebe, 
however, and caught an illumination from her youthful and 
pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about 
the parlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the 
glass vase of flowers that was standing in the sunshine. He 
made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an ill- 
defined, abortive attempt at courtesy. Imperfect as it was, 
however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of 
indescribable grace, such as no practised art of external 
manners could have attained. It was too slight to seize upon 


108 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


at the instant; yet, as recollected afterwards, seemed to 
transfigure the whole man. 

“Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, in the tone with which 
one soothes a wayward infant, “this is our cousin Phoebe,— 
little Phoebe Pyncheon,—Arthur’s only child, you know. 
She has come from the country to stay with us awhile; for 
our old house has grown to be very lonely now.” 

“Phoebe?—Phoebe Pyncheon?—Phoebe?” repeated the 
guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance. 
“Arthur’s child! Ah, I forget! No matter! She is very 
welcome! ” 

“Come, dear Clifford, take this chair,” said Hepzibah, 
leading him to his place. “Pray, Phoebe, lower the curtain 
a very little more. Now let us begin breakfast.” 

The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and 
looked strangely around. He was evidently trying to grapple 
with the present scene, and bring it home to his mind with 
a more satisfactory distinctness. He desired to be certain, 
at least, that he was here, in the low-studded, cross-beamed, 
oaken-paneled parlor, and not in some other spot, which 
had stereotyped itself into his senses. But the effort was too 
great to be sustained with more than a fragmentary success. 
Continually, as we may express it, he faded away out of his 
place; or, in other words, his mind and consciousness took 
their departure, leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy 
figure—a substantial emptiness, a material ghost—to occupy 
his seat at table. Again, after a blank moment, there would 
be a flickering taper-gleam in his eyeballs. It betokened 
that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing its best 
to kindle the heart’s household fire, and light up intellectual 
lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed 
to be a forlorn inhabitant. 

At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still imperfect 
animation, Phoebe became convinced of what she had at first 


THE GUEST 


109 


rejected as too extravagant and startling an idea. She saw 
that the person before her must have been the original of 
the beautiful miniature in her cousin Hepzibah’s possession. 
Indeed, with a feminine eye for costume, she had at once 
identified the damask dressing-gown, which enveloped him, 
as the same in figure, material, and fashion, with that so 
elaborately represented in the picture. This old, faded gar¬ 
ment, with all its pristine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some 
indescribable way, to translate the wearer’s untold misfor¬ 
tune, and make it perceptible to the beholder’s eye. It was 
the better to be discerned, by this exterior type, how worn 
and old were the soul’s more immediate garments; that 
form and countenance, the beauty and grace of which had 
almost transcended the skill of the most exquisite of artists. 
It could the more adequately be known that the soul of 
the man must have suffered some miserable wrong, 
from its earthly experience. There he seemed to sit, with 
a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him and the world, 
but through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught the 
same expression, so defined, so softly imaginative, which 
Malbone—venturing a happy touch, with suspended breath 
—had imparted to the miniature! There had been some¬ 
thing so innately characteristic in this look, that all the 
dusky years, and the burden of unfit calamity which had 
fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy it. 

Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously fragrant 
coffee, and presented it to her guest. As his eyes met hers, 
he seemed bewildered and disquieted. 

“Is this you, Hepzibah?” he murmured, sadly; then, more 
apart, and perhaps unconscious that he was overheard, 
“How changed! how changed! And is she angry with me? 
Why does she bend her brow so?” 

Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl which time 
and her near-sightedness, and the fret of inward discomfort. 


110 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


had rendered so habitual that any vehemence of mood in¬ 
variably evoked it. But at the indistinct murmur of his 
words her whole face grew tender, and even lovely, with 
sorrowful affection; the harshness of her features disap¬ 
peared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow. 

“Angry!” she repeated; “angry with you, Clifford!” 

Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive 
and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without 
subduing a certain something which an obtuse auditor might 
still have mistaken for asperity. It was as if some tran¬ 
scendent musician should draw a soul-thrilling sweetness 
out of a cracked instrument, which makes its physical im¬ 
perfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony,—so deep 
was the sensibility that found an organ in Hepzibah’s voice! 

“There is nothing but love, here, Clifford,” she added,— 
“nothing but love! You are at home!” 

The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which did 
not half light up his face. Feeble as it was, however, and 
gone in a moment, it had a charm of wonderful beauty. It 
was followed by a coarser expression; or one that had the 
effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline of his 
countenance, because there was nothing intellectual to tem¬ 
per it. It was a look of appetite. He ate food with what 
might almost be termed voracity; and seemed to forget him¬ 
self, Hepzibah, the young girl, and everything else around 
- him, in the sensual enjoyment which the bountifully spread 
table afforded. In his natural system, though high-wrought 
and delicately refined, a sensibility to the delights of the 
palate was probably inherent. It would have been kept 
in check, however, and even converted into an accomplish¬ 
ment, and one of the thousand modes of intellectual culture, 
had his more ethereal characteristics retained their vigor. 
But as it existed now, the effect was painful and made 
Phoebe droop her eyes. 


THE GUEST 


111 


In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance 
of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed it eagerly. The 
subtle essence acted on him like a charmed draught, and 
caused the opaque substance of his animal being to grow 
transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a spiritual 
gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer luster than 
hitherto. 

“More, more!” he cried, with nervous haste in his utter¬ 
ance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to 
escape him. “This is what I need! Give me more!” 

Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more 
erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance that took 
note of what it rested on. It was not so much that his 
expression grew more intellectual; this, though it had its 
share, was not the most peculiar effect. Neither was what 
we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to present 
itself in remarkable prominence. But a certain fine temper of 
being was now not brought out in full relief, but changeably 
and imperfectly betrayed, of which it was the function to 
deal with all beautiful and enjoyable things. In a character 
where it should exist as the chief attribute, it would bestow 
on its possessor an exquisite taste, and an enviable suscepti¬ 
bility of happiness. Beauty would be his life; his aspira¬ 
tions would all tend toward it; and, allowing his frame and 
physical organs to be in consonance, his own developments 
would likewise be beautiful. Such a man should have nothing 
to do with sorrow; nothing with strife; nothing with the 
martyrdom which, in an infinite variety of shapes, awaits 
those who have the heart, and will, and conscience, to fight 
a battle with the world. To these heroic tempers, such 
martyrdom is the richest meed in the world’s gift. To the 
individual before us, it could only be a grief, intense in due 
proportion with the severity of the infliction. He had no 
right to be a martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy 


112 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


and so feeble for all other purposes, a generous, strong, and 
noble spirit would, methinks, have been ready to sacrifice 
what little enjoyment it might have planned for itself,—it 
would have flung down the hopes, so paltry in its regard,— 
if thereby the wintry blasts of our rude sphere might come 
tempered to such a man. 

Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed Clifford’s 
nature to be a Sybarite. It was perceptible, even there, in 
the dark old parlor, in the inevitable polarity with which his 
eyes were attracted towards the quivering play of sunbeams 
through the shadowy foliage. It was seen in his appreciating 
notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of which he inhaled 
with a zest almost peculiar to a physical organization so 
refined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it. It 
was betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he re¬ 
garded Phoebe, whose fresh and maidenly 'figure was both 
sunshine and flowers,—their essence, in a prettier and more 
agreeable mode of manifestation. Not less evident was this 
love and necessity for the Beautiful, in the instinctive 
caution with which, even so soon, his eyes turned away from 
his hostess, and wandered to any quarter rather than come 
back. It was Hepzibah’s misfortune,—not Clifford’s fault. 
How could he,—so yellow as she was, so wrinkled, so sad 
of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a turban on her head, 
and that most perverse of scowls contorting her brow,—how 
^ could he love to gaze at her! But, did he owe her no affec¬ 
tion for so much as she had silently given? He owed her 
nothing. A nature like Clifford’s can contract no debts of 
that kind. It is—we say it without censure, nor in diminu¬ 
tion of the claim which it indefeasibly possesses on beings 
of another mould—it is always selfish in its essence; and 
we must give it leave to be so, and heap up our heroic and 
disinterested love upon it so much the more, without a 
recompense. Poor Hepzibah knew this truth, or, at least, 


THE GUEST 


113 


acted on the instinct of it. So long estranged from what 
was lovely as Clifford had been, she rejoiced—rejoiced, 
though with a present sigh, and a secret purpose to shed 
tears in her own chamber—that he had brighter objects 
now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely fea¬ 
tures. They never possessed a charm; and if they had, 
the canker of her grief for him would long since have 
destroyed it. 

The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in his coun¬ 
tenance with a dreamy delight, there was a troubled look 
of effort and unrest. He was seeking to make himself more 
fully sensible of the scene around him; or, perhaps, dread¬ 
ing it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was vexing 
the fair moment with a struggle for some added brilliancy 
and more durable illusion. 

“How pleasant!—How delightful!” he murmured, but 
not as if addressing any one. “Will it last? How balmy the 
atmosphere through that open window! An open window! 
How beautiful that play of sunshine! Those flowers, how 
very fragrant! That young girl’s face, how cheerful, how 
blooming!—a flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in 
the dew-drops! Ah! this must be all a dream! A dream! 
A dream! But it has quite hidden the four stone walls!” 

Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern or 
a dungeon had come over it; there was no more light in its 
expression than might have come through the iron grates of 
a prison window,—still lessening, too, as if he were sinking 
farther into the depths. Phoebe (being of that quickness 
and activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained 
from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what was 
going forward) now felt herself moved to address the 
stranger. 

“Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning 
in the garden,” said she, choosing a small crimson one from 


114 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

among the flowers in the vase. “There will be but five or 
six on the bush this season. This is the most perfect of 
them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it. And how 
sweet it is!—sweet like no other rose! One can never for¬ 
get that scent!” 

“Ah!—let me see!—let me hold it!” cried the guest, 
eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell peculiar to 
remembered odors, brought innumerable associations along 
with the fragrance that it exhaled. “Thank you! This has 
done me good. I remember how I used to prize this flower,— 
long ago, I suppose, very long ago!—or was it only yester¬ 
day ? It makes me feel young again! Am I young ? Either 
this remembrance is singularly distinct, or this consciousness 
strangely dim! But how kind of the fair young girl! Thank 
you! Thank you!” 

The favorable excitement derived from this little crimson 
rose afforded Clifford the brightest moment which he enjoyed 
at the breakfast-table. It might have lasted longer, but 
that his eyes happened, soon afterwards, to rest on the face 
of the old Puritan, who, out of his dingy frame and lusterless 
canvas, was looking down on the scene like a ghost, and a 
most ill tempered and ungenial one. The guest made an 
impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed Hepzibah with 
what might easily be recognized as the licensed irritability 
of a petted member of the family. 

x “Hepzibah!—Hepzibah!” cried he with no little force and 
distinctness, “why do you keep that odious picture on the 
wall? Yes, yes!—that is precisely your taste! I have told 
you a thousand times, that it was the evil genius of the 
house!—my evil genius particularly! Take it down, at 
once!” 

“Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, sadly, “you know it can¬ 
not be!” 

“Then, at all events,” continued he, still speaking with 


THE GUEST 


115 


some energy, “pray cover it with a crimson curtain, 
broad enough to hang in folds, and with a golden border 
and tassels. I cannot bear it! It must not stare me in 
the face!” 

“Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,” said 
Hepzibah, soothingly. “There is a crimson curtain in a 
trunk above stairs,—a little faded and moth-eaten, I’m 
afraid,—but Phoebe and I will do wonders with it.” 

“This very day, remember!” said he; and then added, 
in a low, self-communing voice, “Why should we live in this 
dismal house at all ? Why not go to the South of France ?— 
to Italy?—Paris, Naples, Venice, Rome? Hepzibah will 
say we have not the means. A droll idea, that!” 

He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic 
meaning towards Hepzibah. 

But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were 
marked, through which he had passed, occurring in so brief 
an interval of time, had evidently wearied the stranger. He 
was probably accustomed to a sad monotony of life, not 
so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish, as stagnat¬ 
ing in a pool around his feet. A slumberous veil diffused 
itself over his countenance, and had an effect, morally 
speaking, on its naturally delicate and elegant outline, like 
that which a brooding mist, with no sunshine in it, throws 
over the features of a landscape. He appeared to become 
grosser,—almost cloddish. If aught of interest or beauty— 
even ruined beauty—had heretofore been visible in this 
man, the beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse 
his own imagination of deluding him with whatever grace 
had flickered over that visage, and whatever exquisite luster 
had gleamed in those filmy eyes. 

Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp 
and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself audible. 
Striking most disagreeably on Clifford’s auditory organs and 


116 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused him to 
start upright out of his chair. 

“Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance 
have we now in the house?” cried he, wreaking his resent¬ 
ful impatience—as a matter of course, and a custom of old— 
on the one person in the world that loved him. “I have 
never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit 
it? In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?” 

It was very remarkable into what prominent relief—even 
as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from its canvas— 
Clifford's character was thrown by this apparently trifling 
annoyance. The secret was, that an individual of his temper 
can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of 
the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart. It is 
even possible—for similar cases have often happened—that 
if Clifford, in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of 
cultivating his taste to its utmost perfectibility, that subtile 
attribute might, before this period, have completely eaten 
out or filed away his affections. Shall we venture to pro¬ 
nounce, therefore, that his long and black calamity may not 
have had a redeeming drop of mercy at the bottom? 

“Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your 
ears,” said Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a pain¬ 
ful. suffusion of shame. “It is very disagreeable even to me. 
But, do you know, Clifford, I have something to tell you? 
This ugly noise,—pray run, Phoebe, and see who is there!— 
this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!” 

“Shop-bell!” repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare. 

“Yes, our shop-bell,” said Hepzibah, a certain natural 
dignity, mingled with deep emotion, now asserting itself in 
her manner. “For you must know, dearest Clifford, that we 
are very poor. And there was no other resource, but either 
to accept assistance from a hand that I would push aside 
(and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we were 


THE GUEST 


117 


dying for it,—no help, save from him, or else to earn our 
subsistence with my own hands! Alone, I might have been 
content to starve. But you were to be given back to me! 
Do you think, then, dear Clifford,” added she, with a 
wretched smile, “that I have brought an irretrievable dis¬ 
grace on the old house, by opening a little shop in the front 
gable? Our great-great-grandfather did the same, when 
there was far less need! Are you ashamed of me?” 

“Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak those words to me, 
Hepzibah!” said Clifford,—not angrily, however; for when 
a man’s spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be 
peevish at small offences, but never resentful of great ones. 
So he spoke with only a grieved emotion. “It was not kind 
to say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me now?” 

And then the unnerved man—he that had been born for 
enjoyment, but had met a doom so very wretched—burst 
into a woman’s passion of tears. It was but a brief con¬ 
tinuance, however; soon leaving him in a quiescent, and, 
to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable state. 
From this mood, too, he partially rallied for an instant, and 
looked at Hepzibah with a smile, the keen, half-derisory 
purport of which was a puzzle to her. 

“Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?” said he. 

Finally, his chair being deep and softly cushioned, Clif¬ 
ford fell asleep. Hearing the more regular rise and fall of 
his breath (which, however, even then, instead of being 
strong and full, had a feeble kind of tremor, correspond¬ 
ing with the lack of vigor in his character),—hearing these 
tokens of settled slumber, Hepzibah seized the opportunity 
to peruse his face more attentively than she had yet dared 
to do. Her heart melted away in tears; her profoundest 
spirit sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpress¬ 
ibly sad. In this depth of grief and pity she felt that there 
was no irreverence in gazing at his altered, aged, faded, 


118 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


ruined face. But no sooner was she a little relieved than 
her conscience sm6te her for gazing curiously at him, now 
that he was so changed; and, turning hastily away, Hepzibah 
let down the curtain over the sunny window, and left Clifford 
to slumber there. 


VIII 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 

Phcebe, on entering the shop, beheld there the already 
familiar face of the little devourer—if we can reckon his 
mighty deeds aright—of Jim Crow, the elephant, the camel, 
the dromedaries, and the locomotive. Having expended his 
private fortune, on the two preceding days, in the purchase 
of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young gentleman’s 
present errand was on the part of his mother, in quest of 
three eggs and half a pound of raisins. These articles 
Phoebe accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of gratitude 
for his previous patronage, and a slight super-added morsel 
after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a whale! The 
great fish, reversing his experience with the prophet of 
Nineveh, immediately began his progress down the same red 
pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan had preceded 
him. This remarkable urchin, in truth, was the very emblem 
of old Father Time, both in respect of his all-devouring 
appetite for men and things, and because he, as well as 
Time, after engulfing thus much of creation, looked almost 
as youthful as if he had been just that moment made. 

After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and 
mumbled something to Phoebe, which, as the whale was but 
half disposed of, she could not perfectly understand. 

“What did you say, my little fellow?” asked she. 

“Mother wants to know,” repeated Ned Higgins, more 
distinctly, “how Old Maid Pyncheon’s brother does? Folks 
say he has got home.” 


119 


120 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


“My cousin Hepzibah’s brother!” exclaimed Phoebe, sur¬ 
prised at this sudden explanation of the relationship between 
Hepzibah and her guest. “Her brother! And where can 
he have been?” 

The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snubnose, 
with that look of shrewdness which a child, spending much 
of his time in the street, so soon learns to throw over his 
features, however unintelligent in themselves. Then as 
Phoebe continued to gaze at him, without answering his 
mother’s message, he took his departure. 

As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended 
them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was the 
portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more 
height, would have been the stately figure of a man con- 
slide rably in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of 
some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible. 
A gold-headed cane, of rare Oriental wood, added materially 
to the high respectability of his aspect, as did also a neck¬ 
cloth of the utmdst snowy purity, and the conscientious 
polish of his boots. His dark, square countenance, with its 
almost shaggy depth of eyebrows, was naturally impressive, 
and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had not the 
gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate the 
harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and benevo¬ 
lence. Owing, however, to a somewhat massive accumulation 
of animal substance about the lower region of his face, the 
look was, perhaps, unctuous, rather than spiritual, and had, 
so to speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence, not altogether so 
satisfactory as he doubtless intended it to be. A susceptible 
observer, at any rate, might have regarded it as affording 
very little evidence of the general benignity of soul whereof 
it purported to be the outward reflection. And if the ob¬ 
server chanced to be ill-natured, as well as acute and sus¬ 
ceptible, he would probably suspect that the smile on the 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 


121 


gentleman’s face was a good deal akin to the shine on his 
boots, and that each must have cost him and his boot-black, 
respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and 
preserve them. 

As the stranger entered the little shop, where the pro¬ 
jection of the second story and the thick foliage of the elm- 
tree, as well as the commodities at the window, created a 
sort of gray medium, his smile grew as intense as if he had 
set his heart on counteracting the whole gloom of the atmos¬ 
phere (besides any moral gloom pertaining to Hepzibah 
and her inmates) by the unassisted light of his countenance. 
On perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the 
gaunt presence of the old maid, a look of surprise was mani¬ 
fest. He at first knit his brows; then smiled with more 
unctuous benignity than ever. 

“Ah, I see how it is!” said he, in a deep voice,—a voice 
which, had it come from the throat of an uncultivated man, 
would have been gruff, but, by dint of careful training, was 
now sufficiently agreeable,—“I was not aw^are that Miss 
Hepzibah Pyncheon had commenced business under such 
favorable auspices. You are her assistant, I suppose?” 

“I certainly am,” answered Phoebe, and added, with a 
little air of lady-like assumption (for, civil as the gentle¬ 
man was, he evidently took her to be a young person serving 
for wages), “I am a cousin of Miss Hepzibah, on a visit 
to her.” 

“Her cousin?—and from the country? Pray pardon me, 
then,” said the gentleman, bowing and smiling, as Phoebe 
never had been bowed to nor smiled on before; “in that 
case, we must be better acquainted; for, unless I am sadly 
mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise! Let 
me see,—Mary?—Dolly?—Phoebe?—yes, Phoebe is the 
name! Is it possible that you are Phoebe Pyncheon, only 
child of my dear cousin and classmate, Arthur? Ah, I see 


122 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


your father now, about your mouth! Yes, yes! we must be 
better acquainted! I am your kinsman, my dear. Surely 
you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon?” 

As Phoebe courtesied in reply, the Judge bent forward, 
with the pardonable and even praiseworthy purpose—con¬ 
sidering the nearness of blood, and the difference of age—of 
bestowing on his young relative a kiss of acknowledged 
kindred and natural affection. Unfortunately (without de¬ 
sign, or only with such instinctive design as gives no account 
of itself to the intellect) Phoebe, just at the critical moment, 
drew back; so that her highly respectable kinsman, with his 
body bent over the counter, and his lips protruded, was be¬ 
trayed into the rather absurd predicament of kissing the 
empty air. It was a modern parallel to the case of Ixion 
embracing a cloud, and was so much the more ridiculous, as 
the Judge prided himself on eschewing all airy matter, and 
never mistaking a shadow for a substance. The truth was, 
—and it is Phoebe's only excuse,—that, although Judge 
Pyncheon’s glowing benignity might not be absolutely un¬ 
pleasant to the feminine beholder, with the width of a street, 
or even an ordinary-sized room, interposed between, yet it 
became quite too intense, when this dark, full-fed physiog¬ 
nomy (so roughly bearded, too, that no razor could ever 
make it smooth) sought to bring itself into actual contact 
with the object of its regards. The man, the sex, somehow 
or other, was entirely too prominent in the Judge’s demon¬ 
strations of that sort. Phoebe’s eyes sank, and, without know¬ 
ing why, she felt herself blushing deeply under his look. Yet 
she had been kissed before, and without any particular 
squeamishness, by perhaps half a dozen different cousins, 
younger as well as older than this dark-browed, grisly- 
bearded, white-neck-clothed, and unctuously-benevolent 
Judge! Then, why not by him? 

On raising her eyes, Phoebe was startled by the change 



THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 


123 


in Judge Pyncheon’s face. It was quite as striking, allowing 
for the difference of scale, as that betwixt a landscape under 
a broad sunshine and just before a thunder-storm; not that 
it had the passionate intensity of the latter aspect, but was 
cold, hard, immitigable, like a day-long brooding cloud. 

“Dear me! what is to be done now?” thought the country- 
girl to herself. “He looks as if there were nothing softer in 
him than a rock, nor milder than the east wind! I meant 
no harm! Since he is really my cousin, I would have let 
him kiss me, if I could! ” 

Then, all at once, it struck Phoebe that this very Judge 
Pyncheon was the original of the miniature which the 
daguerreotypist had shown her in the garden, and that the 
hard, stern, relentless look, now on his face, was the same 
that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out. Was 
it, therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully 
concealed, the settled temper of his life? And not merely 
so, but was it hereditary in him, and transmitted down, as 
a precious heirloom, from that bearded ancestor, in whose 
picture both the expression, and, to a singular degree, the 
features of the modern Judge were shown as by a kind of 
prophecy? A deeper philosopher than Phoebe might have 
found something very terrible in this idea. It implied that 
the weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean 
tendencies, and the moral diseases which lead to crime are 
handed down from one generation to another, by a far surer 
process of transmission than human law has been able to 
establish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks 
to entail upon posterity. 

But, as it happened, scarcely had Phoebe’s eyes rested again 
on the Judge’s countenance than all its ugly sternness van¬ 
ished ; and she found herself quite overpowered by the sultry, 
dog-day heat, as it were, of benevolence, which this excellent 
man diffused out of his great heart into the surrounding 


124 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


atmosphere,—very much like a serpent, which, as a pre¬ 
liminary to fascination, is said to fill the air with his peculiar 
odor. 

“I like that, Cousin Phoebe!” cried he, with an emphatic 
nod of approbation. “I like it much, my little cousin! You 
are a good child, and know how to take care of yourself. A 
young girl—especially if she be a very pretty one—can never 
be too chary of her lips.” 

“Indeed, sir,” said Phoebe, trying to laugh the matter off, 
“I did not mean to be unkind.” 

Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to 
the inauspicious commencement of their acquaintance, she 
still acted under a certain reserve, which w T as by no means 
customary to her frank and genial nature. The fantasy 
would not quit her, that the original Puritan, of whom she 
had heard so many somber traditions,—the progenitor of 
the whole race of New England Pyncheons, the founder of 
the House of the^even Gables, and who had died so strangely 
in it,—had now stept into the shop. In these days of off¬ 
hand equipment, the matter was easily enough arranged. 
On his arrival from the other world, he had merely found it 
necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber’s, who 
had trimmed down the Puritan’s full beard into a pair of 
grizzled whiskers, then, patronizing a ready-made clothing 
establishment, he had exchanged his velvet doublet and 
sable cloak, with the richly worked band under his chin, for 
a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; and 
lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up 
a gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon of two centuries 
ago steps forward as the Judge of the passing moment! 

Of course, Phoebe was far too sensible a girl to entertain 
this idea in any other way than as matter for a smile. Pos¬ 
sibly, also, could the two personages have stood together 
before her eye, many points of difference would have been 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 


125 


perceptible, and perhaps only a general resemblance. The 
long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so unlike that 
which had fostered the ancestral Englishman, must inevitably 
have wrought important changes in the physical system of 
his descendant. The Judge’s volume of muscle could hardly 
be the same as the Colonel’s; there was undoubtedly less 
beef in him. Though looked upon as a weighty man among 
his contemporaries in respect of animal substance, and as 
favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental develop¬ 
ment, well adapting him for the judicial bench, we conceive 
that the modern Judge Pyncheon, if weighed in the same 
balance with his ancestor, would have required at least an 
old-fashioned fifty-six to keep the scale in equilibrio. Then 
the Judge’s face had lost the ruddy English hue that showed 
its warmth through all the duskiness of the Colonel’s weather¬ 
beaten cheek, and had taken a sallow shade, the established 
complexion of his country-men. If we mistake not, more¬ 
over, a certain quality of nervousness had become more or 
less manifest, even in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent 
as the gentleman now under discussion. As one of its effects, 
it bestowed on his countenance a quicker mobility than the 
old Englishman’s had possessed, and keener vivacity, but 
at the expense of a sturdier something, on which these acute 
endowments seemed to act like dissolving acids. This 
process, for aught we know, may belong to the great system 
of human progress, which, with every ascending footstep, as it 
diminishes the necessity for animal force, may be destined 
gradually to spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser 
attributes of body. If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure a 
century or two more of such refinement as well as most 
other men. 

The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the Judge 
and his ancestor appears to have been at least as strong as 
the resemblance of mien and feature would afford reason to 


126 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

anticipate. In old Colonel Pyncheon’s funeral discourse the 
clergyman absolutely canonized his deceased parishoner, and 
opening, as it were, a vista through the roof of the church, 
and thence through the firmament above, showed him seated, 
harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the spiritual 
world. On his tombstone, too, the record is highly eulogistic; 
nor does history, so far as he holds a place upon its page, 
assail the consistency and uprightness of his character. So 
also, as regards the Judge Pyncheon of to-day, neither 
clergyman, nor legal critic, nor inscriber of tombstones, 
nor historian of general or local politics, would venture a 
word against this eminent person’s sincerity as a Christian, 
or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or courage 
and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of his 
political party. But, besides these cold, formal, and empty 
words of the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, 
and the pen that writes, for the public eye and for distant 
time,—and which inevitably lose much of their truth and 
freedom by the fatal consciousness of so doing,—there were 
traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal gossip 
about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony. 
It is often instructive to take the woman’s, the private and 
domestic, view of a public man; nor can anything be more 
curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits intended 
for engraving and the pencil-sketches that pass from hand to 
hand behind the original’s back. 

For example: tradition affirmed that the Puritan had 
been greedy of wealth; the Judge, too, with all the show of 
liberal expenditure, was said to be as close-fisted as if his 
gripe were of iron. The ancestor had clothed himself in a 
grim assumption of kindliness, a rough heartiness of word 
and manner, which most people took to be the genuine 
warmth of nature, making its way through the thick and in¬ 
flexible hide of a manly character. His descendant, in com- 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 


127 


pliance with the requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized 
this rude benevolence into that broad benignity of smile, 
wherewith he shone like a noonday sun along the streets, 
or glowed like a household fire in the drawing-rooms of his 
private acquaintance. The Puritan—if not belied by some 
singular stories, murmured, even at this day, under the 
narrator’s breath—had fallen into certain transgressions to 
which men of his great animal development, whatever their 
faith or principles, must continue liable, until they put off 
impurity, along with the gross earthly substance that in¬ 
volves it. We must not stain our page with any con¬ 
temporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may have 
been whispered against the Judge. The Puritan, again, 
an autocrat in his own household, had worn out three wives, 
and, merely by the remorseless weight and hardness of his 
character in the conjugal relation, had sent them, one after 
another, broken-hearted, to their graves. Here the parallel, 
in some sort, fails. The Judge had wedded but a single wife, 
and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage. 
There was a fable, however,—for such we choose to con¬ 
sider it, though, not impossibly, typical of Judge Pyncheon’s 
marital deportment,—that the lady got her death-blow in 
the honeymoon, and never smiled again, because her hus¬ 
band compelled her to serve him with coffee every morning 
at his bedside, in token of fealty to her liege-lord and master. 

But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary re¬ 
semblances,—the frequent recurrence of which, in a direct 
line, is truly unaccountable, when we consider how large an 
accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man at the dis¬ 
tance of one or two centuries. We shall only add, therefore, 
that the Puritan—so at least, says chimney-corner tradition, 
which often preserves traits of character with marvellous 
fidelity—was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty; laying his 
purposes deep, and following them out with an inveteracy 


128 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


of pursuit that knew neither rest nor conscience; trampling 
on the weak, and, when essential to his ends, doing his utmost 
to beat down the strong. Whether the Judge in any degree 
resembled him the further progress of our narrative may 
show. 

Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel 
occurred to Phoebe, whose country birth and residence, in 
truth, had left her pitifully ignorant of most of the family 
traditions, which lingered, like cobwebs and incrustations 
of smoke, about the rooms and chimney-corners of the House 
of the Seven Gables. Yet there was a circumstance, very 
trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd degree of 
horror. She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the 
executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity, 
—that God would give them blood to drink,—and likewise 
of the popular notion, that this miraculous blood might now 
and then be heard gurgling in their throats. The latter 
scandal—as became a person of sense, and, more especially, 
a member of thd Pyncheon family—Phoebe had set down 
for the absurdity which it unquestionably was. But ancient 
superstitions, after being steeped in human hearts and em¬ 
bodied in human breath, and passing from lip to ear in 
manifold repetition, through a series of generations, become 
imbued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke of the 
domestic hearth has scented them through and through. By 
long transmission among household facts, they grow to look 
like them, and have such a familiar way of making them¬ 
selves at home that their influence is usually greater than 
we suspect. Thus it happened, that when Phoebe heard a 
certain noise in Judge Pyncheon’s throat,—rather habitual 
with him, not altogether voluntary, yet indicative of nothing, 
unless it were a slight bronchial complaint, or, as some 
people hinted, an apoplectic symptom,—when the girl heard 
this queer and awkward ingurgitation (which the writer 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 129 

never did hear, and therefore cannot describe), she, very 
foolishly, started, and clasped her hands. 

Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phoebe to be 
discomposed by such a trifle, and still more unpardonable 
to show her discomposure to the individual most concerned 
in it. But the incident chimed in so oddly with her previous 
fancies about the Colonel and the Judge, that, for the mo¬ 
ment, it seemed quite ‘to mingle their identity. 

“What is the matter with you, young woman?” said 
Judge Pyncheon, giving her one of his harsh looks. “Are 
you afraid of anything?” 

“Oh, nothing, sir,—nothing in the world!” answered 
Phoebe, with a little laugh of vexation at herself. “But per¬ 
haps you wish to speak with my cousin Hepzibah. Shall 
I call her?” 

“Stay a moment, if you please,” said the Judge, again 
beaming sunshine out of his face. “You seem to be a little 
nervous this morning. The town air, Cousin Phoebe, does 
not agree with your good, wholesome country habits. Or 
has anything happened to disturb you?—anything remark¬ 
able in Cousin Hepzibah’s family?—An arrival, eh? I 
thought so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little 
cousin. To be an inmate with such a guest may well startle 
an innocent young girl!” 

“You quite puzzle me, sir,” replied Phoebe, gazing inquir¬ 
ingly at the Judge. “There is no frightful guest in the 
house, but only a poor, gentle, childlike man, whom I be¬ 
lieve to be Cousin Hepzibah’s brother. I am afraid (but 
you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not quite in his 
sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a 
mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he 
would play with the baby as if he were only a few years 
older than itself. He startle me!—Oh, no indeed!” 

“I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an ac- 


130 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

count of my cousin Clifford,” said the benevolent Judge. 
“Many years ago, when we were boys and young men to¬ 
gether, I had a great affection for him, and still feel a tender 
interest in all his concerns. You say, Cousin Phoebe, he 
appears to be weak-minded. Heaven grant him at least 
enough of intellect to repent of his past sins!” 

“Nobody, I fancy,” observed Phoebe, “can have fewer to 
repent of.” 

“And is it possible, my dear,” rejoined the Judge, with a 
commiserating look, “that you have never heard of Clifford 
Pyncheon?—that you know nothing of his history? Well, 
it is all right; and your mother has shown a very proper 
regard for the good name of the family with which she con¬ 
nected herself. Believe the best you can of this unfortunate 
person, and hope the best! It is a rule which Christians 
should always follow, in their judgments of one another; and 
especially is it right and wise among near relatives, whose 
characters have necessarily a degree of mutual dependence. 
But is Clifford in the parlor? I will just step in and see.” 

“Perhaps, sir, I^had better call my cousin Hepzibah,” said 
Phoebe; hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to 
obstruct the entrance of so affectionate a kinsman into the 
private regions of the house. “Her brother seemed to be 
just falling asleep after breakfast; and I am sure she would 
not like him to be disturbed. Pray sir, let me give her 
notice! ” 

But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter 
unannounced; and as Phoebe, with the vivacity of a person 
whose movements unconsciously answer to her thoughts, 
had stepped towards the door, he used little or no ceremony 
in putting her aside. 

“No, no, Miss Phoebe!” said Judge Pyncheon, in a voice 
as deep as a thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as a 
cloud whence it issues. “Stay you here! I know the house, 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 


131 


and know my cousin Hepzibah, and know her brother Clifford 
likewise!—nor need my little country cousin put herself to 
the trouble of announcing me!”—in these latter words, by 
the by, there were symptoms of a change from his sudden 
harshness into his previous benignity of manner. “I am at 
home here, Phoebe, you must recollect, and you are the 
stranger. I will just step in, therefore, and see for myself how 
Clifford is, and assure him and Hepzibah of my kindly feelings 
and best wishes. It is right, at this juncture, that they should 
both hear from my own lips how much I desire to serve 
them. Ha! here is Hepzibah herself!” 

Such was the case. The vibrations of the Judge’s voice had 
reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she sat, 
with face averted, waiting on her brother’s slumber. She 
now issued forth, as would appear, to defend the entrance, 
looking, we must needs say, amazingly like the dragon which, 
in fairy tales, is wont to be the guardian over an enchanted 
beauty. The habitual scowl of her brow was, undeniably, 
too fierce, at this moment, to pass itself off on the innocent 
score of near-sightedness; and it was bent on Judge Pyncheon 
in a way that seemed to confound, if not alarm him, so in¬ 
adequately had he estimated the moral force of a deeply 
grounded antipathy. She made a repelling gesture with her 
hand, and stood a perfect picture of prohibition, at full 
length, in the dark frame of the doorway. But we must 
betray Hepzibah’s secret, and confess that the native timor¬ 
ousness of her character even now developed itself in a 
quick tremor, which, to her own perception, set each of her 
joints at variance with its fellows. 

Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardihood 
lay behind Hepzibah’s formidable front. At any rate, being 
a gentleman of steady nerves, he soon recovered himself, 
and failed not to approach his cousin with outstretched 
hand; adopting the sensible precaution, however, to cover 


132 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry, that, had it 
been only half as warm as it. looked, a trellis of grapes might 
at once have turned purple under its summer-like exposure. 
It may have been his purpose, indeed, to melt poor Hep- 
zibah on the spot, as if she were a figure of yellow wax. 

“Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!” exclaimed 
the Judge, most emphatically. “Now, at length, you have 
something to live for. Yes, and all of us, let me say, your 
friends and kindred, have more to live for than we had yes¬ 
terday. I have lost no time in hastening to offer any assist¬ 
ance in my power towards making Clifford comfortable. He 
belongs to us all. I know how much he requires,—how much 
he used to require,—with his delicate taste, and his love of 
the beautiful. Anything in my house,—pictures, books, 
wine, luxuries of the table, he may command them all! It 
would afford me most heartfelt gratification to see him! 
Shall I step in, this moment?” 

“No,” replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too pain¬ 
fully to allow of many words. “He cannot see visitors!” 

“A visitor, my dear cousin!—do you call me so?” cried 
the Judge, whose ^sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the cold¬ 
ness of the phrase. “Nay, then, let me be Clifford's host, 
and your own likewise. Come at once to my house. The 
country air, and all the conveniences—I may say luxuries— 
that I have gathered about me, will do wonders for him. 
And you and I, dear Hepzibah, will consult together, and 
watch together, and labor together, to make our dear Clifford 
happy. Come! why should we make more words about 
what is both a duty and a pleasure on my part? Come to 
me at once!” 

On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous 
recognition of the claims of kindred, Phoebe felt very much 
in the mood of running up to Judge Pyncheon, and giving 
him, of her own accord, the kiss from which she had so re- 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 


133 


cently shrunk away. It was quite otherwise with Hepzibah; 
the Judge’s smile seemed to operate on her acerbity of heart 
like sunshine upon vinegar, making it ten times sourer than 
ever. 

“Clifford,” said she,—still too agitated to utter more than 
an abrupt sentence,—“Clifford has a home here!” 

“May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah,” said Judge Pyn- 
cheon,—reverently lifting his eyes towards that high court 
of equity to which he appealed,—“if you suffer any ancient 
prejudice or animosity to weigh with you in this matter! 
I stand here with an open heart, willing and anxious to 
receive yourself and Clifford into it. Do not refuse my good 
offices,—my earnest propositions for your welfare! They 
are such, in all respects, as it behooves your nearest kinsman 
to make. It will be a heavy responsibility, cousin, if you 
confine your brother to this dismal house and stifled air, 
when the delightful freedom of my country-seat is at his 
command.” 

“It would never suit Clifford,” said Hepzibah, as briefly 
as before. 

“Woman!” broke forth the Judge, giving way to his re¬ 
sentment, “what is the meaning of all this? Have you other 
resources? Nay, I suspected as much! Take care, Hepzi¬ 
bah, take care! Clifford is on the brink of as black a ruin 
as ever befell him yet! But why do I talk with you, woman 
as you are? Make way!—I must see Clifford!” 

Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the door, and 
seemed really to increase in bulk; looking the more terrible, 
also, because there was so much terror and agitation in her 
heart. But Judge Pyncheon’s evident purpose of forcing a 
passage was interrupted by a voice from the inner room; a 
weak, tremulous, wailing voice, indicating helpless alarm, 
with no more energy for self-defence than belongs to a 
frightened infant. 


134 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

“Hepzibah, Hepzibah!” cried the voice; “go down on your 
knees to him! Kiss his feet! Entreat him not to come in! 
Oh, let him have mercy on me! Mercy!—mercy!” 

For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were 
not the Judge’s resolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside, and 
step across the threshold into the parlor, whence issued that 
broken and miserable murmur of entreaty. It was not pity 
that restrained him, for, at the first sound of the enfeebled 
voice, a red fire kindled in his eyes, and he make a quick 
pace forward, with something inexpressibly fierce and grim 
darkening forth, as it were, out of the whole man. To know 
Judge Pyncheon, was to see him at that moment. After such 
a revelation, let him smile with what sultriness he would, he 
could much sooner turn grapes purple, or pumpkins yellow, 
than melt the iron-branded impression out of the beholder’s 
memory. And it rendered his aspect not the less, but more 
frightful, that it seemed not to express wrath or hatred, but 
a certain hot fellness of purpose, which annihilated every¬ 
thing but itself. 

Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent and 
amiable man? Look at the Judge now! He is apparently 
conscious of having erred, in too energetically pressing his 
deeds of loving-kindness on persons unable to appreciate 
them. He will await their better mood, and hold himself 
as ready to assist them then as at this moment. As he 
draws back from the door, an all-comprehensive benignity 
blazes from his visage, indicating that he gathers Hepzibah, 
little Phoebe, and the invisible Clifford, all three, together 
with the whole world besides, into his immense heart, and 
gives them a warm bath in its flood of affection. 

“You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!” said 
he, first kindly offering her his hand, and then drawing on 
his glove preparatory to departure. “Very great wrong! 
But I forgive it, and will study to make you think better 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY 


135 


of me. Of course, our poor Clifford being in so unhappy 
a state of mind, I cannot think of urging an interview at 
present. But I shall watch over his welfare as if he were 
my own beloved brother; nor do I at all despair, my dear 
cousin, of constraining both him and you to acknowledge 
your injustice. When that shall happen, I desire no other 
revenge than your acceptance of the best offices in my power 
to do you.” 

With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal be¬ 
nevolence in his parting nod to Phoebe, the Judge left the 
shop, and went smiling along the street. As is customary 
with the rich, when they aim at the honors of a republic, 
he apologized, as it were, to the people, for his wealth, 
prosperity, and elevated station, by a free and hearty man¬ 
ner towards those who knew him; putting off the more of 
his dignity in due proportion with the humbleness of the 
man whom he saluted, and thereby proving a haughty con¬ 
sciousness of his advantages as irrefragably as if he had 
marched forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the 
way. On this particular forenoon so excessive was the 
warmth of Judge Pyncheon’s kindly aspect, that (such, at 
least, was the rumor about town) an extra passage of the 
water-carts was found essential, in order to lay the dust 
occasioned by so much extra sunshine! 

No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly 
white, and, staggering towards Phoebe, let her head fall on 
the young girl’s shoulder. 

“0 Phoebe!” murmured she, “that man has been the 
horror of my life! Shall I never, never have the courage,— 
will my voice never cease from trembling long enough to let 
me tell him what he is?” 

“Is he so very wicked?” asked Phoebe. “Yet his offers 
were surely kind!” 

“Do not speak of them,—he has a heart of iron!” rejoined 


136 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Hepzibah. “Go now, and talk to Clifford! Amuse and 
keep him quiet! It would disturb him wretchedly to see me 
so agitated as I am. There, go, dear child, and I will try to 
look after the shop.” 

Phoebe went, accordingly, but perplexed herself, mean¬ 
while, with queries as to the purport of the scene which she 
had just witnessed, and also whether judges, clergymen, and 
other characters of that eminent stamp and respectability, 
could really, in any single instance, be otherwise than just 
and upright men. A doubt of this nature has a most dis¬ 
turbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact, comes with 
fearful and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, and 
limit-loving class, in which we find our little country-girl. 
Dispositions more boldly speculative may derive a stern 
enjoyment from the discovery, since there must be evil in 
the world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share of 
it as a low one. A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight, 
may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so 
far as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not 
feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into 
chaos. But Phoebe, in order to keep the universe in its old 
place, was fain tq smother, in some degree, her own intuitions 
as to Judge Pyncheon’s character. And as for her cousin’s 
testimony in disparagement of it, she concluded that Hep- 
zibah’s judgment was embittered by one of those family 
feuds, which render hatred the more deadly by the dead 
and corrupted love that they intermingle with its native 
poison. 


IX 


CLIFFORD AND PHCEBE 

Truly was there something high, generous, and noble in 
the native composition of our poor old Hepzibah! Or else,— 
and it was quite as probably the case,—she had been en¬ 
riched by poverty, developed by sorrow, elevated by the 
strong and solitary affection of her life, and thus endowed 
with heroism, which never could have characterized her in 
what are called happier circumstances. Through dreary 
years Hepzibah had looked forward—for the most part 
despairingly, never with any confidence of hope, but always 
with the feeling that it was her brightest possibility—to the 
very position in which she now found herself. In her own 
behalf, she had asked nothing of Providence but the op¬ 
portunity of devoting herself to this brother, whom she had 
so loved,—so admired for what he was, or might have been, 
—and to whom she had kept her faith, alone of all the 
world, wholly, unfalteringly, at every instant, and through¬ 
out life. And here, in his late decline, the lost one had come 
back out of his long and strange misfortune, and was thrown 
on her sympathy, as it seemed, not merely for the bread of 
his physical existence, but for everything that should keep 
him morally alive. She had responded to the call. She had 
come forward,—-our poor, gaunt Hepzibah, in her rusty 
silks, with her rigid joints, and the sad perversity of her 
scowl,—ready to do her utmost; and with affection enough, 
if that were all, to do a hundred times as much! There 
137 


138 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


could be few more tearful sights,—and Heaven forgive us 
if a smile insist on mingling with our conception of it!—few 
sights with truer pathos in them, than Hepzibah presented on 
that first afternoon. 

How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clifford up in her 
great, warm love, and make it all the world to him, so that 
he should retain no torturing sense of the coldness and 
dreariness without! Her little efforts to amuse him! How 
pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were! 

Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, she un¬ 
locked a bookcase, and took down several books that had 
been excellent reading in their day. There was a volume of 
Pope, with the Rape of the Lock in it, and another of the 
Tatler, and an odd one of Dryden’s Miscellanies, all with 
tarnished gilding on their covers, and thoughts of tarnished 
brilliancy inside. They had no success with Clifford. These, 
and all such writers of society, whose new works glow like 
the rich texture of a just-woven carpet, must be content to 
relinquish their charm, for every reader, after an age or two, 
and could hardly be supposed to retain any portion of it for 
a mind that had utterly lost its estimate of modes and man¬ 
ners. Hepzibah then took up Rasselas, and began to read 
of the Happy Valley, with a vague idea that some secret of 
a contented life had there been elaborated, which might at 
least serve Clifford and herself for this one day. But the 
Happy Valley had a cloud over it. Hepzibah troubled her 
auditor, moreover, by innumerable sins of emphasis, which 
he seemed to detect, without any reference to the meaning; 
nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of the sense of 
what she read, but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, 
without harvesting its profit. His sister’s voice, too, naturally 
harsh, had, in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, contracted 
a kind of croak, which, when it once gets into the human 
throat, is as ineradicable as sin. In both sexes, occasionally, 


CLIFFORD AND P H (E B E 


139 


this life-long croak, accompanying each word of joy or sor¬ 
row, is one of the symptoms of a settled melancholy; and 
wherever it occurs, the whole history of misfortune is con¬ 
veyed in its slightest accent. The effect is as if the voice had 
been dyed black; or,—if we must use a more.moderate simile, 
—this miserable croak, running through all the variations 
of the voice, is like a black silken thread, on which the 
crystal beads of speech are strung, and whence they take 
their hue. Such voices have put on mourning for dead hopes; 
and they ought to die and be buried along with them! 

Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her efforts, 
Hepzibah searched about the house for the means of more 
exhilarating pastime. At one time, her eyes chanced to rest 
on Alice Pyncheon’s harpsichord. It was a moment of great 
peril; for,—despite the traditionary awe that had gathered 
over this instrument of music, and the dirges which spiritual 
fingers were said to play on it,—the devoted sister had solemn 
thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford’s benefit, 
and accompanying the performance with her voice. Poor 
Clifford! Poor Hepzibah! Poor harpsichord! All three 
would have been miserable together. By some good agency, 
—possibly, by the unrecognized interposition of the long- 
buried Alice herself,—the threatening calamity was averted. 

But the worst of all—the hardest stroke of fate for Hep¬ 
zibah to endure, and perhaps for Clifford too—was his in¬ 
vincible distaste for her appearance. Her features, never 
the most agreeable, and now harsh with age and grief, and 
resentment against the world for his sake; her dress, and 
especially her turban; the queer and quaint manners, which 
had unconsciously grown upon her in solitude,—such being 
the poor gentlewoman’s outward characteristics, it is no 
great marvel, although the mournfullest of pities, that the 
instinctive lover of the Beautiful was fain to turn away his 
eyes. There was no help for it. It would be the latest 


140 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


impulse to die within him. In his last extremity, the expiring 
breath stealing faintly through Clifford’s lips, he would doubt¬ 
less press Hepzibah’s hand, in fervent recognition of all her 
lavished love, and close his eyes,—but not so much to die, 
as to be constrained to look no longer on her face! Poor 
Hepzibah! She took counsel with herself what might be 
done, and thought of putting ribbons on her turban; but, 
by the instant rush of several guardian angels, was withheld 
from an experiment that could hardly have proved less than 
fatal to the beloved object of her anxiety. 

To be brief, besides Hepzibah’s disadvantages of person, 
there was an uncouthness pervading all her deeds; a clumsy 
something, that could but ill adapt itself for use, and not at 
all for ornament. She was a grief to Clifford, and she knew 
it. In this extremity, the antiquated virgin turned to Phoebe. 
No groveling jealousy was in her heart. Had it pleased 
Heaven to crown the heroic fidelity of her life by making her 
personally the medium of Clifford’s happiness, it would have 
rewarded her for all the past, by a joy with no bright tints, 
indeed, but deep and true, and worth a thousand gayer 
ecstasies. This could not be. She therefore turned to Phoebe, 
and resigned theTask into the young girl’s hands. The latter 
took it up cheerfully, as she did everything, but with no 
sense of a mission to perform, and succeeding all the better 
for the same simplicity. 

By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Phoebe 
soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if 
not the daily life, of her two forlorn companions. The grime 
and sordidness of the House of the Seven Gables seemed to 
have vanished since her appearance there; the gnawing 
tooth of the dry-rot was stayed among the old timbers of 
its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so 
densely, from the antique ceilings, upon the floors and furni¬ 
ture of the rooms below,—or, at any rate, there was a little 


141 


CLIFFORD AND PH(EBE 

housewife, as light-footed as the breeze that sweeps a garden 
walk, gliding hither and thither to brush it all away. The 
shadows of gloomy events that haunted the else lonely and 
desolate apartments; the heavy, breathless scent which death 
had left in more than one of the bedchambers, ever since his 
visits of long ago,—these were less powerful than the purify¬ 
ing influence scattered throughout the atmosphere of the 
household by the presence of one youthful, fresh, and 
thoroughly wholesome heart. There was no morbidness in 
Phoebe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was 
the very locality to ripen it into incurable disease. But now 
her spirit resembled, in its potency, a minute quantity of 
attar of rose in one of Hepzibah’s huge, iron-bound trunks, 
diffusing its fragrance through the various articles of linen 
and wrought-lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings, folded dresses, 
gloves, and whatever else was treasured there. As every 
article in the great trunk was the sweeter for the rose-scent, 
so did all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and Clifford, 
somber as they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of 
happiness from Phoebe’s intermixture with them. Her 
activity of body, intellect, and heart impelled her continu¬ 
ally to perform the ordinary little toils that offered them¬ 
selves around her, and to think the thought proper for the 
moment, and to sympathize,—now with the twittering 
gayety of the robins in the pear-tree, and now to such a 
depth as she could with Hepzibah’s dark anxiety, or the 
vague moan of her brother. This facile adaptation was at 
once the symptom of perfect health and its best preservative. 

A nature like Phoebe’s has invariably its due influence, 
but is seldom regarded with due honor. Its spiritual force, 
however, may be partially estimated by the fact of her hav¬ 
ing found a place for herself, amid circumstances so stern 
as those which surrounded the mistress of the house; and 
also by the effect which she produced on a character of so 


142 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

much more mass than her own. For the gaunt, bony frame 
and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with the tiny' light¬ 
someness of Phoebe’s figure, were perhaps in some fit propor¬ 
tion with the moral weight and substance, respectively, of 
the woman and the girl. 

To the guest,—to Hepzibah’s brother,—or Cousin Clifford, 
as Phoebe now began to call him,—she was especially neces¬ 
sary. Not that he could ever be said to converse with her, or 
often manifest, in any other very definite mode, his sense of a 
charm in her society. But if she were a long while absent 
he became pettish and nervously restless, pacing the room 
to and fro with the uncertainty that characterized all his 
movements; or else would sit broodingly in his great chair, 
resting his head on his hands, and evincing life only by an 
electric sparkle of ill-humor, whenever Hepzibah endeavored 
to arouse him. Phoebe’s presence, and the contiguity of her 
fresh life to his blighted one, was usually all that he re¬ 
quired. Indeed, such was the native gush and play of her 
spirit, that she was seldom perfectly quiet and undemonstra¬ 
tive, any more than a fountain ever ceases to dimple and 
warble with its flow. She possessed the gift of song, and 
that, too, so naturally, that you would as little think of in¬ 
quiring whenhe she had caught it, or what master had taught 
her, as of asking the same questions about a bird, in whose 
small strain of music we recognize the voice of the Creator 
as distinctly as in the loudest accents of his thunder. So 
long as Phoebe sang, she might stray at her own will about 
the house. Clifford was content, whether the sweet, airy 
homeliness of her tones came down from the upper cham¬ 
bers, or along the passageway from the shop, or was 
sprinkled through the foliage of the pear-tree, inward from 
the garden, with the twinkling sunbeams. He would sit 
quietly, with a gentle pleasure gleaming over his face, 
brighter now, and now a little dimmer, as the song hap- 


CLIFFORD AND P H (E B E 


143 


pened to float near him, or was more remotely heard. It 
pleased him best, however, when she sat on a low footstool 
at his knee. 

It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament, 
that Phoebe oftener chose a strain of pathos than of gayety. 
But the young and happy are not ill pleased to temper their 
life with a transparent shadow. The deepest pathos of 
Phoebe’s voice and song, moreover, came sifted through the 
golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was somehow so 
interfused with the quality thence acquired, that one’s heart 
felt all the lighter for having wept at it. Broad mirth, in 
the sacred presence of dark misfortune, would have jarred 
harshly and irreverently with the solemn symphony that 
rolled its undertone through Hepzibah’s and her brother’s 
life. Therefore, it was well that Phoebe so often chose sad 
themes, and not amiss that they ceased to be so sad while 
she was singing them. 

Becoming habituated to her companionship, Clifford 
readily showed how capable of imbibing pleasant tints and 
gleams of cheerful light from all quarters his nature must 
originally have been. Fie grew youthful while she sat by 
him. A beauty,—not precisely real, even in its utmost 
manifestation, and which a painter would have watched long 
to seize and fix upon his canvas, and, after all, in vain,— 
beauty, nevertheless, that was not a mere dream, would 
sometimes play upon and illuminate his face. It did more 
than to illuminate; it transfigured him with an expression 
that could only be interpreted as the glow of an exquisite and 
happy spirit. That gray hair, and those furrows,—with 
their record of infinite sorrow so deeply written across his 
brow, and so compressed, as with a futile effort to crowd 
in all the tale, that the whole inscription was made illegible, 
—these, for the moment, vanished. An eye, at once tender 
and acute, might have beheld in the man some shadow of 


144 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


what he was meant to be. Anon, as age came stealing, like 
a sad twilight, back over his figure, you would have felt 
tempted to hold an argument with Destiny, and affirm, that 
either this being should not have been made mortal, or 
mortal existence should have been tempered to his qualities. 
There seemed no necessity for his having drawn breath at all; 
the world never wanted him; but, as he had breathed, it 
ought always to have been the balmiest of summer air. The 
same perplexity will invariably hatint us with regard to 
natures that tend to feed exclusively upon the Beautiful, 
let their earthly fate be as lenient as it may. 

Phoebe, it is probable, had but a very imperfect compre¬ 
hension of the character over which she had thrown so 
beneficent a spell. Nor-was it necessary. The fire upon the 
hearth can gladden a whole semicircle of faces around about 
it, but need not know the individuality of one among them 
all. Indeed, there was something too fine and delicate in 
Clifford’s traits to be perfectly appreciated by one whose 
sphere lay sOxjnuch in the Actual as Phoebe’s did. For Clif¬ 
ford, however, the reality, and simplicity, and thorough 
homeliness of the girl’s nature, were as powerful a charm as 
any that she possessed. Beauty, it is true, and beauty almost 
perfect in its own style, was indispensable. Had Phoebe 
been coarse in feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh voice, and 
uncouthly mannered, she might have been rich with all good 
gifts, beneath this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as 
she wore the guise of woman, she would have shocked Clif¬ 
ford, and depressed him by her lack of beauty. But nothing 
more beautiful—nothing prettier, at least—was ever made 
than Phoebe. And, therefore, to this man,—whose whole 
poor and impalpable enjoyment of existence heretofore, and 
until both his heart and fancy died within him, had been a 
dream,—whose images of women had more and more lost 
their warmth and substance, and been frozen, like the pic- 


CLIFFORD AND PHCEBE 


145 


tures of secluded artists, into the chilliest ideality,—to him, 
this little figure of the cheeriest household life was just what 
he required to bring him back into the breathing world. 
Persons who have wandered, or been expelled, out of the 
common track of things, even were it for a better system, 
desire nothing so much as to be led back. They shiver in 
their loneliness, be it on a mountain-top or in a dungeon. 
Now, Phoebe’s presence made a home about her,—that very 
sphere which the outcast, the prisoner, the potentate,—the 
wretch beneath mankind, the wretch aside from it, or the 
wretch above it,—instinctively pines after,—a home! She 
was real! Holding her hand, you felt something; a tender 
something; a substance, and a warm one: and so long as 
you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you might be certain 
that your place was good in the whole sympathetic chain 
of human nature. The world was no longer a delusion. 

By looking a little further in this direction, we might 
suggest an explanation of an often-suggested mystery. Why 
are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity 
of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make 
the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that 
of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at 
his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; 
but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger. 

There was something very beautiful in the relation that 
grew up between this pair, so closely and constantly linked 
together, yet with such a waste of gloomy and mysterious 
years from his birthday to hers. On Clifford’s part it was 
the feeling of a man naturally endowed with the liveliest 
sensibility to feminine influence, but who had never quaffed 
the cup of passionate love, and knew that it was now too late. 
He knew it, with the instinctive delicacy that had survived 
his intellectual decay. Thus, his sentiment for Phoebe, with¬ 
out being paternal, was not less chaste than if she had 


146 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


been his daughter. He was a man, it is true, and recognized 
her as a woman. She was his only representative of woman¬ 
kind. He took unfailing note of every charm that apper¬ 
tained to her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the 
virginal development of her bosom. All her little womanly 
ways, budding out of her like blossoms on a young fruit-tree, 
had their effect on him, and sometimes caused his very heart 
to tingle with the keenest thrills of pleasure. At such mo¬ 
ments,—for the effect was seldom more than momentary,— 
the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious life, just 
as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the musician’s 
fingers sweep across it. But, after all, it seemed rather a 
perception, or a sympathy, than' a sentiment belonging to 
himself as an individual. He read Phoebe, as he would a sweet 
and simple story; he listened to her, as if she were a verse of 
household poetry, which God, in requital of his bleak and 
dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him, 
to warble through the house. She was not an actual fact 
for him, but the interpretation of all that he had lacked on 
earth brought warmly home to his conception; so that this 
mere symbol, or lifelike picture, had almost the comfort of 
reality. 

But we strive in vain to put the idea into words. No 
adequate expression of the beauty and profound pathos with 
Which it impresses us is attainable. This being, made only 
for happiness, and heretofore so miserably failing to be 
happy,—his tendencies so hideously thwarted, that, some 
unknown time ago, the delicate springs of his character, 
never morally or intellectually strong, had given way, and 
he was now imbecile,—this poor, forlorn voyager from 
the Islands of the Blest, in a frail bark, on a tempestuous 
sea, had been flung, by the last mountain-wave of his ship¬ 
wreck, into a quiet harbor. There, as he lay more than half 
lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an earthly rose-bud 


CLIFFORD AND PH(EBE 147 

had come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had summoned 
up reminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing 
beauty amid which he should have had his home. With his 
native susceptibility of happy influences, he inhales the 
slight, ethereal rapture into his soul, and expires! 

And how did Phoebe regard Clifford ? The girl’s was not 
one of those natures which are most attracted by what is 
strange and exceptional in human character. The path 
which would best have suited her was the well-worn track 
of ordinary life; the companions in whom she would most 
have delighted were such as one encounters at every turn. 
The mystery which enveloped Clifford, so far as it affected 
her at all, was an annoyance, rather than the piquant charm 
which many women might have found in it. Still, her 
native kindliness was brought strongly into play, not by 
what was darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so much, 
even, by the finer graces of his character, as by the simple 
appeal of a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of genuine 
sympathy as hers. She gave him an affectionate regard, be¬ 
cause he needed so much love, and seemed to have received 
so little. With a ready tact, the result of ever-active and 
wholesome sensibility, she discerned what was good for him, 
and did it. Whatever was morbid in his mind and experience 
she ignored; and thereby kept their intercourse healthy, by 
the incautious, but, as it were, heaven-directed freedom of 
her whole conduct. The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in 
body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the 
manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all 
quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are 
compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in in¬ 
finite repetition. But Phoebe afforded her poor patient a 
supply of purer air. She impregnated it, too, not with a 
wild-flower scent,—for wildness was no trait of hers,—but 
with the perfume of garden-roses, pinks, and other blossoms 


148 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

of much sweetness, which nature and man have consented 
together in making grow from summer to summer, and from 
century to century. Such a flower was Phoebe, in her rela¬ 
tion with Clifford, and such the delight that he inhaled 
from her. 

Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a little, 
in consequence of the heavy atmosphere about her. She 
grew more thoughtful than heretofore. Looking aside at 
Clifford’s face, and seeing the dim, unsatisfactory elegance 
and the intellect almost quenched, she would try to inquire 
what had been his life. Was he always thus? Had this 
veil been over him from his birth?—this veil, under which 
far more of his spirit was hidden than revealed, and through 
which he so imperfectly discerned the actual world,—or was 
its gray texture woven of some dark calamity? Phoebe 
loved no riddles, and would have been glad to escape the 
perplexity of this one. Nevertheless, there was so far a 
good result of her meditations on Clifford’s character, that, 
when her involuntary conjectures, together with the tend¬ 
ency of every strange circumstance to tell its own story, 
had gradually taught her the fact, it had no terrible effect 
upon her. Let the world have done him what vast wrong 
it might, she knew Cousin Clifford too well—or fancied so— 
e4er to shudder at the touch 1 of his thin delicate fingers. 

Within a few days after the appearance of this remarkable 
inmate, the routine of life had established itself with a good 
deel of uniformity in the old house of our narrative. In 
the morning, very shortly after breakfast, it was Clifford’s 
custom to fall asleep in his chair; nor, unless accidentally 
disturbed, would he emerge from a dense cloud of slumber 
or the thinner mists that flitted to and fro, until well to¬ 
wards noonday. These hours of drowsihead were the season 
of the old gentlewoman’s attendance on her brother, while 
Phoebe took charge of the shop; an arrangement which the 


CLIFFORD AND PH(EBE 


149 


public speedily understood, and evinced their decided prefer¬ 
ence of the younger shopwoman by the multiplicity of their 
calls during her administration of affairs. Dinner over, 
Hepzibah took her knitting-work,—a long stocking of gray 
yarn, for her brother’s winter-wear,—and with a sigh, and 
a scowl of affectionate farewell to Clifford, and a gesture 
enjoining watchfulness on Phoebe, went to take her seat 
behind the counter. It was now the young girl’s turn to 
be the nurse,—the guardian, the playmate,—or whatever 
is the fitter phrase,—of the gray-haired man. 


X 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 

Clifford, except for Phoebe’s more active instigation, 
would ordinarily have yielded to the torpor which had crept 
through all his modes of being, and which sluggishly coun¬ 
seled him to sit in his morning chair till eventide. But the 
girl seldom failed to propose a removal to the garden, where 
Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist had made such re¬ 
pairs on the roof of the ruinous. arbor, or summer-house, 
that it was now a sufficient shelter from sunshine and casual 
showers. The hop-vine, too, had begun to grow luxuriantly 
over the sides of the little edifice, and made an interior of 
verdant seclusion, with innumerable peeps and glimpses 
into the wider solitude of the garden. 

Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering 
light, Phoebe read to Clifford. Her acquaintance, the artist, 
r who appeared to have a literary turn, had supplied her with 
works of fiction, in pamphlet-form, and a few volumes of 
poetry, in altogether a different style and taste from those 
which Hepzibah selected for his amusement. Small thanks 
were due to the books, however, if the girl’s readings w r ere 
in any degree more successful than her elderly cousin’s. 
Phoebe’s voice had always a pretty music in it, and could 
either enliven Clifford by its sparkle and gayety of tone, or 
soothe him by a continued flow of pebbly and brook-like 
cadences. But the fictions—in which the country-girl, un¬ 
used to works of that nature, often became deeply absorbed— 
150 


151 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 

interested her strange auditor very little, or not at all. Pic¬ 
tures of life, scenes of passion or sentiment, wit, humor, and 
pathos, were all thrown away, or worse than thrown away, 
on Clifford; either because he lacked an experience by which 
to test their truth, or because his own griefs were a touch¬ 
stone of reality that few feigned emotions could withstand. 
When Phoebe broke into a peal of merry laughter at what 
she read, he would now and then laugh for sympathy, but 
oftener respond with a troubled, questioning look. If a tear— 
a maiden’s sunshiny tear over imaginary woe—dropped upon 
some melancholy page, Clifford either took it as a token of 
actual calamity, or else grew peevish, and angrily motioned 
her to close the volume. And wisely too! Is not the world 
sad enough, in genuine earnest, without making a pastime 
of mock-sorrows? 

With poetry it was rather better. He delighted in the , 
swell and subsidence of the rhythm, and the happily recur¬ 
ring rhyme. Nor was Clifford incapable of feeling the senti¬ 
ment of poetry,—not, perhaps, where it was highest or 
deepest, but where it was most flitting and ethereal. It was 
impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse the awakening 
spell might lurk; but, on raising her eyes from the page to 
Clifford’s face, Phoebe would be made aware, by the light 
breaking through it, that a more delicate intelligence than 
her own had caught a lambent flame from what she read. 
One glow of this kind, however, was often the precursor of 
gloom for many hours afterward; because, when the glow 
left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense and power, 
and groped about for them, as if a blind man should go 
seeking his lost eyesight. 

It pleased him more, and was better for his inward wel¬ 
fare, that Phoebe should talk, and make passing occurrences 
vivid to his mind by her accompanying description and 
remarks. The life of the garden offered topics enough for 


152 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


such discourse as suited Clifford best. He never failed to 
inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday. His 
feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so 
much a taste as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with 
one in his hand, intently observing it, and looking from its 
petals into Phoebe’s face,'as if the garden flower were the 
sister of the household maiden. Not merely was there a 
delight in the flower’s perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful 
form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clif¬ 
ford’s enjoyment was accompanied with a perception of 
life, character, and individuality, that made him love these 
blossoms of the garden, as if they were endowed with senti¬ 
ment and intelligence. This affection and sympathy for 
flowers is almost exclusively a woman’s trait. Men, if en¬ 
dowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to 
despise it, in their contact with coarser things than flowers. 
Clifford, too, had long forgotten it; but found it again now, 
as he slowly revived from the chill torpor of his life. 

It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents continually 
came to pass in that secluded garden-spot when once Phoebe 
had set herself to look for them. She had seen or heard a 
bee there, on the first day of her acquaintance with the 
place. And often,—almost continually, indeed,—since then, 
the bees kept coming thither, Heaven knows why, or by 
rwhat pertinacious desire, for far-fetched sweets, when, no 
doubt, there were broad clover-fields, and all kinds of gar¬ 
den growth, much nearer home than this. Thither the bees 
came, however, and plunged into the squash-blossoms, as 
if there were no other squash-vines within a long day’s 
flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah’s garden gave its produc¬ 
tions just the very quality which these laborious little wiz¬ 
ards wanted, in order to impart the Hymettus odor to their 
whole hive of New England honey. When Clifford heard 
their sunny, buzzing murmur, in the heart of the great yellow 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 


153 


blossoms, he looked about him with a joyful sense of warmth, 
and blue sky, and green grass, and of God's free air in the 
whole height from earth to heaven. After all, there need 
be no question why the bees came to that one green nook 
in the dusty town. God sent them thither to gladden our poor 
Clifford. They brought the rich summer with them, in 
requittal of a little honey. 

When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there 
was one particular variety which bore a vivid scarlet blos¬ 
som. The daguerreotypist had found these beans in a gar¬ 
ret, over one of the seven gables, treasured up in an old 
chest of drawers, by some horticultural Pyncheon of days 
gone by, who, doubtless, meant to sow them the next sum¬ 
mer, but was himself first sown in Death’s garden-ground. 
By way of testing whether there were still a living germ in 
such ancient seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them; 
and the result of his experiment was a splendid row of 
bean-vines, clambering, early, to the full height of the 
poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in a spiral 
profusion of red blossoms. And, ever since the unfolding 
of the first bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been 
attracted thither. At times, it seemed as if for every one 
of the hundred blossoms there was one of these tiniest fowls 
of the air,—a thumb’s bigness of burnished plumage, hov¬ 
ering and vibrating about the bean-poles. It was with in¬ 
describable interest, and even more than childish delight, 
that Clifford watched the humming-birds. He used to thrust 
his head softly out of the arbor to see them the better; all 
the while, too, motioning Phoebe to be quiet, and snatching 
glimpses of the smile upon her face, so as to heap his enjoy¬ 
ment up the higher with her sympathy. He had not merely 
grown young;—he was a child again. 

Hepzibah, whenever she happened to witness one of these 
fits of miniature enthusiasm, would shake her head, with a 


154 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


strange mingling of the mother and sister, and of pleasure 
and sadness, in her aspect. She said that it had always been 
thus with Clifford when the humming-birds came,—always, 
from his babyhood,—and that his delight in them had been 
one of the earliest tokens by which he showed his love for 
beautiful things. And it was a wonderful coincidence, the 
good lady thought, that the artist should have planted these 
scarlet-flowering beans—which the humming-birds sought 
far and wide, and which had not grown in the Pyncheon 
garden before for forty years—on the very summer of Clif¬ 
ford’s return. 

Then would the tears stand in poor Hepzibah’s eyes, or 
overflow them with a too abundant gush, so that she was 
fain to betake herself into some corner lest Clifford should 
espy her agitation. Indeed, all the enjoyments of this period 
were provocative of tears. Coming so late as it did, it was 
a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest sun¬ 
shine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight. The 
more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the 
sadder was the difference to be recognized. With a myste¬ 
rious and terrible Past, which had annihilated his memory, 
and a blank Future before him, he had only this visionary 
and impalpable Now, which, if you once look closely at it, 
is nothing. He himself, as was perceptible by many symp¬ 
toms, lay darkly behind his pleasure, and knew it to be a 
f baby-play, which he was to toy and trifle with, instead of 
thoroughly believing. Clifford saw, it may be, in the mirror 
of his deeper consciousness, that he was an example and 
representative of that great class of people whom an inex¬ 
plicable Providence is continually putting at cross-purposes 
with the world: breaking what seems its own promise in 
their nature; withholding their proper food, and setting 
poison before them for a banquet; and thus—when it might 
so easily, as one would think, have been adjusted otherwise— 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 


155 


making their existence a strangeness, a solitude, and tor¬ 
ment. All his life long, he had been learning how to be 
wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the 
lesson thoroughly by heart, he could with difficulty com¬ 
prehend his little airy happiness. Frequently there was a 
dim shadow of doubt in his eyes. “Take my hand, Phoebe,” 
he would say, “and pinch it hard with your little fingers! 
Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns, and prove my¬ 
self awake by the sharp touch of pain! ” Evidently, he de¬ 
sired this prick of a trifling anguish, in order to assure him¬ 
self, by that quality which he best knew to be real, that the 
garden, and the seven weather-beaten gables, and Hepzibah’s 
scowl, and Phoebe’s smile, were real likewise. Without this 
signet in his flesh, he could have attributed no more sub¬ 
stance to them than to the empty confusion of imaginary 
scenes with which he had fed his spirit, until even that poor 
sustenance was exhausted. 

The author needs great faith in his reader’s sympathy; 
else he must hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents 
apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the idea 
of this garden-life. It was the Eden of a thunder-smitten 
Adam, who had fled for refuge thither out of the same 
dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original Adam 
was expelled. 

One of the available means of amusement, of which Phoebe 
made the most in Clifford’s behalf, was that feathered 
society, the hens, a breed of whom, as we have already said, 
was an immemorial heirloom in the Pyncheon family. In 
compliance with a whim of Clifford, as it troubled him to 
see them in, confinement, they had been set at liberty, and 
now roamed at will about the garden; doing some little 
mischief but hindered from escape by buildings on three 
sides, and the difficult peaks of a wooden fence on the other. 
They spent much of their abundant leisure on the margin 


156 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

of Maulers well, which was haunted by a kind of snail, evi¬ 
dently a titbit to their palates; and the brackish water itself, 
however nauseous to the rest of the world, was so greatly 
esteemed by these fowls, that they might be seen tasting, 
turning up their heads, and smacking their bills, with pre¬ 
cisely the air of wine-bibbers round a probationary cask. 
Their generally quiet, yet often brisk, and constantly diversi¬ 
fied talk, one to another, or sometimes in soliloquy,—as they 
scratched worms out of the rich, black soil, or pecked at 
such plants as suited their taste,—had such a domestic tone, 
that it was almost a wonder why you could not establish a 
regular interchange of ideas about household matters, human 
and gallinaceous. All hens are well worth studying for the 
piquancy and rich variety of their manners; but by no 
possibility can there have been other fowls of such odd ap¬ 
pearance and deportment as these ancestral ones. They 
probably embodied the traditionary peculiarities of their 
whole line of progenitors, derived through an unbroken 
succession of eggs; or else this individual Chanti¬ 
cleer and his two wives had grown to be humorists, and a 
little crack-brained withal, on account of their solitary 
way of life, and out of sympathy for Hepzibah, their 
lady-patroness. 

Queer, indeed, they looked! Chanticleer himself, though 
stalking on two stilt-like legs, with the dignity of interminable 
descent in all his gestures, was hardly bigger than an ordinary 
partridge; his two wives were about the size of quails; and 
as for the one chicken, it looked small enough to be still in 
the egg, and, at the same time, sufficiently old, withered, 
wizened, and experienced, to have been the founder of the 
antiquated race. Instead of being the youngest of the family, 
it rather seemed to have aggregated into itself the ages, not 
only of these living specimens of the breed, but of all its 
forefathers and foremothers, whose united excellencies and 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 


157 


oddities were squeezed into its little body. Its mother evi¬ 
dently regarded it as the one chicken of the world, and as 
necessary, in fact, to the world’s continuance, or, at any rate, 
to the equilibrium of the present State of affairs, whether 
in church or state. No lesser sense of the infant fowl’s im¬ 
portance could have justified, even in a mother’s eyes, the 
perseverance with which she watched over its safety, ruf¬ 
fling her small person to twice its proper size, and flying in 
everybody’s face that so much as looked towards her hopeful 
progeny. No lower estimate could have vindicated the 
indefatigable zeal with which she scratched, and her un¬ 
scrupulousness in digging up the choicest flower or vegetable, 
for the sake of the fat earthworm at its root. Her nervous 
cluck, when the chicken happened to be hidden in the long 
grass or under the squash-leaves; her gentle croak of satis¬ 
faction, while sure of it beneath her wing; her note of ill- 
concealed fear and obstreperous defiance, when she saw her 
arch-enemy, a neighbor’s cat, on the top of the high fence, 
—one or other of these sounds was to be heard at almost 
.every moment of the day. By degrees, the observer came 
to feel nearly as much interest in this chicken of illustrious 
race as the mother-hen did. 

Phoebe, after getting well acquainted with the old hen, 
was sometimes permitted to take the chicken in her hand, 
which was quite capable of grasping its cubic inch or two of 
body. While she curiously examined its hereditary marks, 
—the peculiar speckle of its plumage, the funny tuft on 
its head, and a knob on each of its legs,—the little biped, 
as she insisted, kept giving her a sagacious wink. The 
daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks be¬ 
tokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and that the 
chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house, em¬ 
bodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible 
one, as such clews generally are. It was a feathered riddle; 


158 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as 
if the egg had been addle! 

The second of Chanticleer’s two wives, ever since Phoebe’s 
arrival, had been in a state of heavy despondency, caused, 
as it afterwards appeared, by her inability to lay an egg. 
One day, however, by her self-important gait, the sideway 
turn of her head, and the cock of her eye, as she pried into 
one and another nook of the garden,—croaking to herself, 
all the while, with inexpressible complacency,—it was made 
evident that this identical hen, much as mankind undervalued 
her, carried something about her person the worth of which 
was not to be estimated either in gold or .precious stones. 
Shortly after there was a prodigious cackling and gratula- 
tion of Chanticleer and all his family, including the wizened 
chicken, who appeared to understand the matter quite as 
well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt. That afternoon 
Phoebe found a diminutive egg,—not in the regular nest, 
it was far too precious to be trusted there,—but cunningly 
hidden under the currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of last 
year’s grass. Hepzibah, on learning the fact, took posses¬ 
sion of the egg and appropriated it to Clifford’s breakfast, 
on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, for which, as she 
affirmed, these eggs had always been famous. Thus un¬ 
scrupulously did the old gentlewoman sacrifice the continu¬ 
ance, perhaps, of an ancient feathered race, with no better 
end than to supply her brother with a dainty that hardly 
filled the bowl of a tea-spoon! It must have been in refer¬ 
ence to this outrage that Chanticleer, the next day, accom¬ 
panied by the bereaved mother of the egg, took his post in 
front of Phoebe and Clifford, and delivered himself of a 
harangue that might have proved as long as his own pedigree, 
but for a fit of merriment on Phoebe’s part. Hereupon, the 
offended fowl stalked away on his long stilts, and utterly 
withdrew his notice from Phoebe and the rest of human 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 


159 


nature, until she made her peace with an offering of spice- 
cake, which, next to snails, was the delicacy most in favor 
with his aristocratic taste. 

We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet 
of life that flowed through the garden of the Pyncheon 
House. But we deem it pardonable to record these mean 
incidents and poor delights, because they proved so greatly 
to Clifford’s benefit. They had the earth-smell in them, 
and contributed to give him health and substance. Some of 
his occupations wrought less desirably upon him. He had 
a singular propensity, for example, to hang over Maule’s 
well, and look at the constantly shifting phantasmagoria of 
figures produced by the agitation of the water over the 
mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom. He said that 
faces looked upward to him there,—beautiful faces, arrayed 
in bewitching smiles,—each momentary face so fair and rosy, 
and every smile so sunny, that he felt wronged at its de¬ 
parture, until the same flitting witchcraft made a new one. 
But sometimes he would suddenly cry out, “The dark 
face gazes at me!” and be miserable the whole day after¬ 
wards. Phoebe, when she hung over the fountain by Clif¬ 
ford’s side, could see nothing of all this,—neither the beauty 
nor the ugliness,—but only the colored pebbles, looking as 
if the gush of the waters shook and disarranged them. And 
the dark face, that so troubled Clifford, was no more than 
the shadow thrown from a branch of one of the damson-trees, 
and breaking the inner light of Maule’s well. The truth was, 
however, that his fancy—reviving faster than his will and 
judgment, and always stronger than they—created shapes 
of loveliness that were symbolic of his native character, 
and now and then a stern and dreadful shape that typified 
his fate. 

On Sundays, after Phoebe had been at church,—for the 
girl had a church-going conscience, and would hardly have 


160 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


been at ease had she missed either prayer, singing, sermon, 
or benediction,—after church-time, therefore, there was, 
ordinarily, a sober little festival in the garden. In addition 
to Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phoebe, two guests made up the 
company. One was the artist, Holgrave, who, in spite of 
his consociation with reformers, and his other queer and 
questionable traits, continued to hold an elevated place in 
Hepzibah’s regard. The other, we are almost ashamed to 
say, was the venerable Uncle Venner, in a clean shirt, and 
a broadcloth coat, more respectable than his ordinary w T ear, 
inasmuch as it was neatly patched on each elbow, and might 
be called an entire garment, except for a slight inequality 
in the length of its skirts. Clifford, on several occasions, had 
seemed to enjoy the old man’s intercourse, for the sake of 
his mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor 
of a frost-bitten apple, such as one picks up under the tree 
in December. A man at the very lowest point of the social 
scale was easier and more agreeable for the fallen gentleman 
to encounter than a person at any of the intermediate 
degrees; and, moreover, as Clifford’s young manhood had 
been lost, he was .fond of feeling himself . comparatively 
youthful, now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of 
Uncle Venner. In fact, it was sometimes observable that 
Clifford half wilfully hid from himself the consciousness of 
being stricken in years, and cherished visions of an earthly 
future still before him; visions, however, too indistinctly 
drawn to be followed by disappointment—though, doubtless, 
by depression—when any casual incident or recollection made 
him sensible of the withered leaf. 

So this oddly composed little social party used to assemble 
under the ruinous arbor. Hepzibah—stately as ever at 
heart, and yielding not an inch of her old gentility, but 
resting upon it so much the more, as justifying a princess¬ 
like condescension—exhibited a not ungraceful hospitality. 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 


161 


She talked kindly to the vagrant artist, and took sage counsel 
—lady as she was—with the wood-sawyer, the messenger of 
everybody’s petty errands, the patched philosopher. And 
Uncle Yenner, who had studied the world at street-corners, 
and other posts equally well adapted for just observation, 
was as ready to give out his wisdom as a town-pump to 
give water. 

“Miss Hepzibah, ma’am,” said he once, after they had 
all been cheerful together, “I really enjoy these quiet little 
meetings of a Sabbath afternoon. They are very much like 
what I expect to have after I retire to my farm! ” 

“Uncle Venner,” observed Clifford, in a drowsy, inward 
tone, “is always talking about his farm. But I have a bet¬ 
ter scheme for him, by and by. We shall see!” 

“Ah, Mr. Clifford Pyncheon!” said the man of patches, 
“you may scheme for me as much as you please; but I’m 
not going to give up this one scheme of my own, even if I 
never bring it really to pass. It does seem to me that men 
make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up property 
upon property. If I had done so, I should feel as if Prov¬ 
idence was not bound to take care of me; and, at all events, 
the city wouldn’t be! I’m one of those people who think 
that infinity is big enough for us all—and eternity long 
enough.” 

“Why, so they are, Uncle Venner,” remarked Phoebe, 
after a pause; for she had been trying to fathom the pro¬ 
fundity and appositeness of this concluding apothegm. “But 
for this short life of ours, one would like a house and a 
moderate garden-spot of one’s own.” 

“It appears to me,” said the daguerreotypist, smiling, 
“that Uncle Venner has the principles of Fourier at the 
bottom of his wisdom; only they have not quite so much 
distinctness, in his mind, as in that of the systematizing 
Frenchman.” 


162 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


“Come, Phoebe,” said Hepzibah, “it is time to bring the 
currants.” 

And then, while the yellow richness of the declining sun¬ 
shine still fell into the open space of the garden, Phoebe 
brought out a loaf of bread and a china bowl of currants, 
freshly gathered from the bushes, and crushed with sugar. 
These, with water,—but not from the fountain of ill omen, 
close at hand,—constituted all the entertainment. Mean¬ 
while, Holgrave took some pains to establish an intercourse 
with Clifford, actuated, it might seem, entirely by an im¬ 
pulse of kindliness, in order that the present hour might 
be cheerfuller than most which the poor recluse had spent, 
or was destined yet to spend. Nevertheless, in the artist’s 
deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes, there was, now and 
then, an expression, not sinister, but questionable; as if he 
had some other interest in the scene than a stranger, a 
youthful and unconnected adventurer, might be supposed 
to have. With great mobility of outward mood, however, 
he applied himself to the task of enlivening the party; and 
with so much success, that even dark-hued Hepzibah threw 
off one tint of melancholy, and made what shift she could 
with the remaining portion. Phoebe said to herself,—“How 
pleasant he can be!” As for Uncle Venner, as a mark of 
friendship and approbation, he readily consented to afford 
the young man his countenance in the way of his profession, 
—not metaphorically, be it understood, but literally, by 
allowing a daguerreotype of his face, so familiar to the 
town, to be exhibited at the entrance of Holgrave’s studio. 

Clifford, as the company partook of their little banquet, 
grew to be the gayest of them all. Either it was one of 
those up-quivering flashes of the spirit, to which minds in 
an abnormal state are liable, or else the artist had subtly 
touched some chord that made musical vibration. Indeed, 
what with the pleasant summer evening, and the sympathy 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 


163 


of this little circle of not unkindly souls, it was perhaps 
natural that a character so susceptible as Clifford’s should 
become animated, and show itself readily responsive to 
what was said around him. But he gave out his own thoughts, 
likewise, with an airy and fanciful glow; so that they 
glistened, as it were, through the arbor, and made their 
escape among the interstices of the foliage. He had been 
as cheerful, no doubt, while alone with Phoebe, but never 
with such tokens of acute, although partial intelligence. 

But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Gables, 
so did the excitement fade out of Clifford’s eyes. He gazed 
vaguely and mournfully about him, as if he missed some¬ 
thing precious, and missed it the more drearily for not 
knowing precisely what it was. 

“I want my happiness!” at last he murmured, hoarsely 
and indistinctly, hardly shaping out the words. “Many, 
many years have I waited for it! It is late! It is late! 
I want my happiness!” 

Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with troubles 
that ought never to have befallen you. You are partly 
crazy and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, as almost every¬ 
body is,—though some in less degree, or less perceptibly, 
than their fellows. Fate has no happiness in store for you; 
unless your quiet home in the old family residence with the 
faithful Hepzibah, and your long summer afternoons with 
Phoebe, and these Sabbath festivals with Uncle Venner and 
the daguerreotypist, deserve to be called happiness! Why 
not? If not the thing itself, it is marvelously like it, and 
the more so for that ethereal and intangible quality which 
causes it all to vanish at too close an introspection. Take 
it, therefore, while you may! Murmur not,—question not, 
—but make the most of it! 


XI 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 

From the inertness, or what we may term the vegetative 
character, of his ordinary mood, Clifford would perhaps 
have been content to speiid one day after another, inter¬ 
minably,—or, at least, throughout the summer-time,—in 
just the kind of life described in the preceding pages. Fancy¬ 
ing, however, that it might be for his benefit occasionally to 
diversify the scene, Phoebe sometimes suggested that he 
should look out upon the life of the street. For this pur¬ 
pose, they used to mount the staircase together, to the 
second story of the house, where, at the termination of a 
wide entry, there was an arched window of uncommonly 
large dimensions, shaded by a pair of curtains. It opened 
above the porch, where there had formerly been a balcony, 
the balustrade of which had long since gone to decay, and 
been removed. At this arched window, throwing it open, 
but keeping himself in comparative obscurity by means of 
the curtain, Clifford had an opportunity of witnessing such 
a portion of the great world’s movement as might be sup¬ 
posed to roll through one of the retired streets of a not very 
populous city. But he and Phoebe made a sight as well 
worth seeing as any that the city could exhibit. The pale, 
gray, childish, aged, melancholy, yet often simply cheerful, 
and sometimes delicately intelligent aspect of Clifford, peer¬ 
ing from behind the faded crimson of the curtain,—watch¬ 
ing the monotony of every-day occurrences with a kind of 

164 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 


165 


inconsequential interest and earnestness, and, at every petty 
throb of his sensibility, turning for sympathy to the eyes 
of the bright young girl! 

If once he were fairly seated at the window, even Pyn- 
cheon Street would hardly be so dull and lonely but that, 
somewhere or other along its extent, Clifford might discover 
matter to occupy his eye, and titillate, if not engross, his 
observation. Things familiar to the youngest child that 
had begun its. outlook at existence seemed strange to him. 
A cab; an omnibus, with its populous interior, dropping here 
and there a passenger, and picking up another, and thus 
typifying that vast rolling vehicle, the world, the end of 
whose journey is everywhere and nowhere; these objects 
he followed eagerly with his eyes, but forgot them before 
the dust raised by the horses and wheels had settled along 
their track. As regarded novelties (among which cabs and 
omnibuses were to be reckoned), his mind appeared to have 
lost its proper gripe and retentiveness. Twice or thrice, for 
example, during the- sunny hours of the day, a water-cart 
went along by the Pyncheon House, leaving a broad wake of 
moistened earth, instead of the white dust that had risen 
at a lady’s lightest footfall; it was like a summer shower, 
which the city authorities had caught and tamed, and com¬ 
pelled it into the commonest routine of their convenience. 
With the water-cart Clifford could never grow familiar; it 
always affected him with just the same surprise as at first. 
His mind took an apparently sharp impression from it, but 
lost the recollection of this perambulatory shower, before 
its next reappearance, as completely as did the street itself, 
along which the heat so quickly strewed white dust again. 
It was the same with the railroad. Clifford could hear the 
obstreperous howl of the steam-devil, and, by leaning a 
little way from the arched window, could catch a glimpse 
of the .trains of cars, flashing a brief transit across the ex- 


166 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


tremity of the street. The idea of terrible energy thus 
forced upon him was new at every recurrence, and seemed 
to affect him as disagreeably, and with almost as much sur¬ 
prise, the hundredth time as the first. 

Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or 
suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, 
and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. 
It can merely be a suspended animation; for, were the 
power actually to perish, there would be little use of im¬ 
mortality. We are less than ghosts, for the time being, 
whenever this calamity befalls us. 

Clifford was indeed the most inveterate of conservatives. 
All the antique fashions of the street were dear to him; 
even such as were characterized by a rudeness that would 
naturally have annoyed his fastidious senses. He loved the 
old rumbling and jolting carts, the former track of which 
he still found in his long-buried remembrance, as the ob¬ 
server of to-day finds the wheel-tracks of ancient vehicles 
in Herculaneum. The butcher’s cart, with its snowy canopy, 
was an acceptable object; so was the fish-cart, heralded by 
its horn; so, likewise, was the countryman’s cart of vegetables, 
plodding from door to door, with long pauses of the patient 
horse, while his owner drove a trade in turnips, carrots, 
summer-squashes, string-beans, green peas, and new potatoes, 
with half the housewives of the neighborhood. The baker’s 
cart, with the harsh music of its bells, had a pleasant effect 
on Clifford, because, as few things else did, it jingled the 
very dissonance of yore. One afternoon a scissor-grinder 
chanced to set his wheel a-going under the Pyncheon Elm, 
and just in front of the arched window. Children came 
running with their mothers’ scissors, or the carving-knife, 
or the paternal razor, or anything else that lacked an edge 
(except, indeed, poor Clifford’s wits), that the grinder might 
apply the article to his magic wheel, and give it back as 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 


167 


good as new. Round went the busily revolving machinery, 
kept in motion by the seissor-grinder’s foot, and wore away 
the hard steel against the hard stone, whence issued 
an intense and spiteful prolongation of a hiss as 
fierce as those emitted by Satan and his compeers in 
Pandemonium, though squeezed into smaller compass. 
It was an ugly, little, venomous serpent of a noise, 
as ever did petty violence to human ea r s. But Clif¬ 
ford listened with rapturous delight. The sound, however 
disagreeable, had very brisk life in it, and, together with 
the circle of curious children watching the revolutions of 
the wheel, appeared to give him a more vivid sense of 
active, bustling, and sunshiny existence than he had attained 
in almost any other way. Nevertheless, its charm lay 
chiefly in the past; for the scissor-grinder’s wheel had 
hissed in his childish ears. 

He sometimes made doleful complaint that there were 
no stage-coaches nowadays. And he asked in an injured 
tone what had become of all those old square-top chaises, 
with wings sticking out on either side, that used to be drawn 
by a plough-horse, and driven by a farmer’s wife and 
daughter, peddling whortleberries and blackberries about 
the town. Their disappearance made him doubt, he said, 
whether the berries had not left off growing in the broad 
pastures and along the shady country lanes. 

But anything that appealed to the sense of beauty, in 
however humble a way, did not require to be recommended 
by these old associations. This was observable when one 
of those Italian boys (who are rather a modern feature of 
our streets) came along with his barrel-organ, and stopped 
under the wide and cool shadows of the elm. With his quick 
professional eye he took note of the two faces watching him 
from the arched window, and, opening his instrument, began 
to scatter its melodies abroad. He had a monkey on his 


168 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

shoulder, dressed in a Highland plaid; and, to complete 
the sum of splendid attractions wherewith he presented him¬ 
self to the public, there was a company of little figures, 
whose sphere and habitation was in the mahogany case of 
his organ, and whose principle of life was the music which 
the Italian made it his business to grind out. In all their 
variety of occupation,—the cobbler, the blacksmith, the 
soldier, the lady with her fan, the toper with his bottle, the 
milkmaid sitting by her cow,—this fortunate little society 
might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence, and 
to make life literally a dance. The Italian turned a crank; 
and, behold! every one of these small individuals started 
into the most curious vivacity. The cobbler wrought upon 
a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron; the soldier waved 
his glittering blade; the lady .raised a tiny breeze with her 
fan; the jolly toper swigged lustily at his bottle; a scholar 
opened his book with eager thirst for knowledge, and turned 
his head to and fro along the page; the milkmaid energetically 
drained her cow; and a miser counted gold into his strong¬ 
box,—all at the same turning of a crank. Yes; and, moved 
by the self-same impulse, a lover saluted his mistress on her 
lips! Possibly some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had 
desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, 
whatever our business or amusement,—however serious, 
however trifling,—all dance to one identical tune, and, in 
spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally to pass. 
For the most remarkable aspect of the affair was, that, at 
the cessation of the music, everybody was petrified; at 
once, from the most extravagant life into a dead torpor. 
Neither was the cobbler’s shoe finished, nor the blacksmith’s 
iron shaped out; nor was there a drop less of brandy in the 
toper’s bottle, nor a drop more of milk in the milkmaid’s 
pail, nor one additional coin in the miser’s strong-box, nor 
was the scholar a page deeper in his book. All were pre- 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 


169 


cisely in the same condition as before they made them¬ 
selves so ridiculous by their haste to toil, to enjoy, to accu¬ 
mulate gold, and to become wise. Saddest of all, moreover, 
the lover was none the happier for the maiden’s granted 
kiss! But, rather than swallow this last too acrid in¬ 
gredient, we reject the whole moral of the show. 

The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out into 
preposterous prolixity from beneath his tartans, took his 
station at the Italian’s feet. He turned a wrinkled and 
abominable little visage to every passer-by, and to the 
circle of children that soon gathered round, and to Hepzibah’s 
shop-door, and upward to the arched window, whence Phoebe 
and Clifford were looking down. Every moment, also, he 
took off his Highland bonnet, and performed a bow and 
scrape. Sometimes, moreover, he made personal application 
to individuals, holding out his small black palm, and other¬ 
wise plainly signifying his excessive desire for whatever filthy 
lucre might happen to be in anybody’s pocket. The mean 
and low, yet strangely man-like expression of his wilted 
countenance; the prying and crafty glance, that showed him 
ready to gripe at every miserable advantage; his enormous 
tail (too enormous to be decently concealed under his gabar¬ 
dine), and the deviltry of nature which it betokened,—take 
this monkey just as he was, in short, and you could desire 
no better image of the Mammon of copper coin, symbolizing 
the grossest form of the love of money. Neither was there 
any possibility of satisfying the covetous little devil. Phoebe 
threw down a whole handful of cents, which he picked up 
with joyless eagerness, handed them over to the Italian for 
safe-keeping, and immediately recommenced a series of pan¬ 
tomimic petitions for more. 

Doubtless, more than one New Englander—or, let him 
be of what country he might, it is as likely to be the case— 
passed by, and threw a look at the monkey, and went on, 


170 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


without imagining how nearly his own moral condition was 
here exemplified. Clifford, however, was a being of another 
order. He had taken childish delight in the music, and 
smiled, too, at the figures which it set in motion. But, after 
looking a while at the long-tailed imp, he was so shocked 
by his horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as physical, that 
he actually began to shed tears; a weakness which men of 
merely delicate endowments, and destitute of the fiercer, 
deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can hardly avoid, 
when the worst and meanest aspect of life happens to be 
presented to them. 

Pyncheon Street was sometimes enlivened by spectacles 
of more imposing pretensions than the above, and which 
brought the multitude along with them. With a shivering 
repugnance at the idea of personal contact with the world, 
a powerful impulse still seized on Clifford, whenever the 
rush and roar of the human tide grew strongly audible to 
him. This was made evident, one day, when a political pro¬ 
cession, with hundreds of flaunting banners, and drums, 
fifes, clarions, and cymbals, reverberating between the rows 
of buildings, marched all through town, and trailed its length 
of trampling footsteps, and most infrequent uproar, past 
the ordinarily quiet House of the Seven Gables. As a mere 
object of sight, nothing is more deficient in picturesque fea¬ 
tures than a procession seen in its passage through narrow 
streets. The spectator feels it to be fool’s play, when he can 
distinguish the tedious commonplace of each man’s visage, 
with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and 
the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or laxity of 
his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his black coat. 
In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some 
vantage point, as it rolls its slow and long array through 
the center of a wide plain, or the stateliest public square of 
a city; for then, by its remoteness, it melts all the petty 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 


171 


personalities, of which it is made up, into one broad mass 
of existence,—one great life,—one collected body of man¬ 
kind, with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating it. But, on 
the other hand, if an impressible person, standing alone over 
the brink of one of these processions, should behold it, not 
in its atoms, but in its aggregate,—as a mighty river of life, 
massive in its tide, and black with mystery, and, out of its 
depths, calling to the kindred depth within him,—then the 
contiguity would add to the effect. It might so fascinate 
him that he would hardly be restrained from plunging into 
the surging stream of human sympathies. 

So it proved with Clifford. He shuddered; he grew pale; 
he threw an appealing look at Hepzibah and Phoebe, who 
were with him at the window. They comprehended nothing 
of his emotions, and supposed him merely disturbed by 
the unaccustomed tumult. At last, with tremulous limbs, 
he started up, set his foot on the window-sill, and in an in¬ 
stant more would have been in the unguarded balcony. As 
it was, the whole procession might have seen him, a wild, 
haggard figure, his gray locks floating in the wind that waved 
their banners; a lonely being, estranged from his race, but 
now feeling himself man again, by virtue of the irrepressible 
instinct that possessed him. Had Clifford attained the bal¬ 
cony, he would probably have leaped into the street; but 
whether impelled by the species of terror that sometimes 
urges its victims over the very precipice which he shrinks 
from, or by a natural magnetism, tending towards the great 
center of humanity, it were not easy to decide. Both im¬ 
pulses might have wrought on him at once. 

But his companions, affrighted by his gesture,—which was 
that of a man carried away in spite of himself,—seized 
Clifford’s garment and held him back. Hepzibah shrieked. 
Phoebe, to whom all extravagance was a horror, burst into 
sobs and tears. 


172 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


“Clifford, Clifford! are you crazy?” cried his sister. 

“I hardly know, Hepzibah,” said Clifford, drawing a long 
breath. “Fear nothing,—it is over now,—but had I taken 
that plunge, and survived it, methinks it would have made 
me another man!” 

Possibly, in some sense, Clifford may have been right. 
He needed a shock; or perhaps he required to take a deep, 
deep plunge into the ocean of human life, and to sink down 
and be covered by its profoundness, and then to emerge, 
sobered, invigorated, restored to the world and to himself. 
Perhaps, again, he required nothing less than the great final 
remedy—death! 

A similar yearning to renew the broken links of brother¬ 
hood with his kind sometimes showed itself in a milder form; 
and once it was made beautiful by the religion that lay even 
deeper than itself. In the incident now to be sketched, 
there was a touching recognition, on Clifford’s part, of God’s 
care and love towards him,—towards this poor, forsaken 
man, who, if any mortal could, might have been pardoned 
for regarding himself as thrown aside, forgotten, and left 
to be the sport of some fiend, whose playfulness was an 
ecstasy of mischief. 

It was the Sabbath morning; one of those bright, calm 
Sabbaths, with its own hallowed atmosphere, when Heaven 
seems to diffuse itself over the earth’s face in a solemn 
smile, no less sweet than solemn. On such a Sabbath morn, 
were we pure enough to be its medium, we should be conscious 
of the earth’s natural worship ascending through our frames, 
on whatever spot of ground we stood. The church-bells, 
with various tones, but all in harmony, were calling out, and 
responding to one another,—“It is the Sabbath!—The Sab¬ 
bath!—Yea; the Sabbath!”—and over the whole city the 
bells scattered the blessed sounds, now slowly, now with 
livelier joy, now one bell alone, now all the bells together, 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 


173 


crying earnestly,—“It is the Sabbath!” and flinging their 
accents afar off, to melt into the air, and pervade it with the 
holy word. The air, with God’s sweetest and tenderest sun¬ 
shine in it, was meet for mankind to breathe into their hearts, 
and send it forth again as the utterance of prayer. 

Clifford sat at the window with Hepzibah, watching the 
neighbors as they stepped into the street. All of them, how¬ 
ever unspiritual on other days, were transfigured by the 
Sabbath influence; so that their very garments—whether 
it were an old man’s decent coat well brushed for the thou¬ 
sandth time, or a little boy’s first sack and trousers finished 
yesterday by his mother’s needle—had somewhat of the 
quality of ascension-robes. Forth, likewise, from the portal 
of the old house, stepped Phoebe, putting up her small green 
sunshade, and throwing upward a glance and smile of parting 
kindness to the faces at the arched window. In her aspect 
there was a familiar gladness, and a holiness that you could 
play with, and yet reverence it as much as ever. She was like 
a prayer, offered up in the homeliest beauty of one’s mother- 
tongue. Fresh was Phoebe, moreover, and airy and sweet in 
her apparel; as if nothing that she wore—neither her gown, 
nor her small straw bonnet, nor her little kerchief, any more 
than her snowy stockings—had ever been put on before; or, if 
worn, were all the fresher for it, and with a fragrance as if 
they had lain among the rose-buds. 

The girl waved her hand to Hepzibah and Clifford, and 
went up the street; a religion in herself, warm, simple, true, 
with a substance that could walk on earth, and a spirit that 
was capable of heaven. 

“Hepzibah,” asked Clifford, after watching Phoebe to the 
corner, “do you never go to church?” 

“No, Clifford!” she replied,—“not these many, many 
years! ” 

“Were I to be there,” he rejoined, “it seems to me that I 



174 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


could pray once more, when so many human souls were 
praying all around me!” 

She looked into Clifford’s face, and beheld there a soft 
natural effusion; for his heart gushed out, as it were, and 
ran over at his eyes, in delightful reverence for God, and 
kindly affection for his human brethren. The emotion com¬ 
municated itself to Hepzibah. She yearned to take him by 
the hand, and go and kneel down, they two together,—both 
so long separate from the world, and, as she now recognized, 
scarcely friends with Him above,—to kneel down among the 
people, and be reconciled to God and man at once. 

“Dear brother,” said she, earnestly, “let us go! We belong 
nowhere. We have not a foot of space in any church to 
kneel upon; but let us go to some place of worship, even if 
we stand in the broad aisle. Poor and forsaken as we are, 
some pew-door will be opened to us! ” 

So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves ready,— 
as ready as they could in the best of their old-fashioned gar¬ 
ments, which had hung on pegs, or been laid away in trunks, 
so long that the dampness and mouldy smell of the past was 
on them,—made themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, 
to go to church. They descended the staircase together,— 
gaunt, sallow Hepzibah, and pale, emaciated, age-stricken 
Clifford! They pulled open the front door, and stepped 
across the threshold, and felt, both of them, as if they were 
standing in the presence of the whole world, and with man¬ 
kind’s great and terrible eye on them alone. The eye of their 
Father seemed to be withdrawn, and gave them no encourage¬ 
ment. The warm sunny air of the street made them shiver. 
Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of taking one 
step farther. 

“It cannot be, Hepzibah!—it is too late,” said Clifford, 
with deep sadness. “We are ghosts! We have no right 
among human beings,—no right anywhere but in this old 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 


175 


house, which has a curse on it, and which, therefore, we are 
doomed to haunt! And, besides,” he continued, with a 
fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of the man, 
“it would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly thought 
that I should be frightful to my fellow-beings, and that 
children would cling to their mothers’ gowns at sight of me!” 

They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and closed 
the door. But, going up the staircase again, they found the 
whole interior of the house tenfold more dismal, and the air 
closer and heavier, for the glimpse and breath of freedom 
which they had just snatched. They could not flee; their 
jailer had but left the door ajar in mockery, and stood be¬ 
hind it to watch them stealing out. At the threshold, they 
felt his pitiless gripe upon them. For, what other dungeon 
is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable 
as one’s self! 

But it would be no fair picture of Clifford’s state of mind 
were we to represent him as continually or prevailingly 
wretched. On the contrary, there was no other man in the 
city, we are bold to affirm, of so much as half his years, 
who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless moments as 
himself. He had no burden of care upon him; there were 
none of those questions and contingencies with the future 
to be settled which wear away all other lives, and render 
them not worth having by the very process of providing for 
their support. In this respect he was a child,—a child for the 
whole term of his existence, be it long or short. Indeed, his 
life seemed to be standing still at a period little in advance 
of childhood, and to cluster all his reminiscences about that 
epoch; just as, after the torpor of a heavy blow, the suf¬ 
ferer’s reviving consciousness goes back to a moment consid¬ 
erably behind the accident that stupefied him. He some¬ 
times told Phoebe and Hepzibah his dreams, in which he 
invariably played the part of a child, or a very young man. 


176 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

So vivid were they, in his relation of them, that he once 
held a dispute with his sister as to the particular figure of 
print of a chintz morning-dress, which he had seen their 
mother wear, in the dream of the preceding night. Hepzibah, 
piquing herself on a woman’s accuracy in such matters, held 
it to be slightly different from what Clifford described; but, 
producing the very gown from an old trunk, it proved to be 
identical with his remembrance of it. Had Clifford, every 
time that he emerged out of dreams so lifelike, undergone 
the torture of transformation from a boy into an old and 
broken man, the daily recurrence of the shock would have 
been too much to bear. It would have caused an acute 
agony to thrill from the morning twilight, all the day through, 
until bedtime; and even then would have mingled a dull, 
inscrutable pain, and pallid hue of misfortune, with the 
visionary bloom and adolescence of his slumber. But the 
nightly moonshine interwove itself with the morning mist, 
and enveloped him as in a robe, which he hugged about his 
person, and seldom let realities pierce through; he was not 
often quite awake, but slept open-eyed, and perhaps fancied 
himself most dreaming then. 

Thus, lingering always so near his childhood, he had 
sympathies with children, and kept his heart the fresher 
thereby, like a reservoir into which rivulets were pouring 
not far from the fountain-head. Though prevented, by a 
subtile sense of propriety, from desiring to associate with 
them, he loved few things better than to look out of the 
arched window, and see a little girl driving her hoop along 
the sidewalk, or school boys at a game of ball. Their voices, 
also, were very pleasant to him, heard at a distance, all 
swarming and intermingling together as flies do in a sunny 
room. 

Clifford would, doubtless, have been glad to share their 
sports. One afternoon he was seized with an irresistible 


THE ARCHED WINDOW 177 

desire to blow soap-bubbles; an amusement, as Hepzibah 
told Phoebe apart, that had been a favorite one with her 
brother when they were both children. Behold him, there¬ 
fore, at the arched window, with an earthen pipe in his 
mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a wan, unreal 
smile over his countenance, where still hovered a beautiful 
grace, which his worst enemy must have acknowledged to 
be spiritual and immortal, since it had survived so long! 
Behold him, scattering airy spheres abroad, from the window 
into the street! Little impalpable worlds were those soap- 
bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as 
imagination, on the nothing of their surface. It was curious 
to see how the passers-by regarded these brilliant fantasies, 
as they came floating down, and made the dull atmosphere 
imaginative about them. Some stopped to gaze, and, per¬ 
haps, carried a pleasant recollection of the bubbles onward 
as far as the street-corner; some looked angrily upward, 
as if poor Clifford wronged them by setting an image of 
beauty afloat so near their dusty pathway. A great many 
put out their fingers or their walking-sticks to touch, withal; 
and were perversely gratified, no doubt, when the bubble, 
with all its pictured earth and sky scene, vanished as if it 
had never been. 

At length, just as an elderly gentleman of very dignified 
presence happened to be passing, a large bubble sailed 
majestically down, and burst right against his nose! He 
looked up,—at first with a stern, keen glanGe, which pene¬ 
trated at once into the obscurity behind the arched window, 
—then with a smile which might be conceived as diffusing a 
dog-day sultriness for the space of several yards about him. 

“Aha, Cousin Clifford!” cried Judge Pyncheon. “What! 
still blowing soap-bubbles! ” 

The tone seemed as if meant to be kind and soothing, 
but yet had a bitterness of sarcasm in it. As for Clifford, 


178 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


an absolute palsy of fear came over him. Apart from any 
definite cause of dread which his past experience might have 
given him, he felt that native and original horror of the 
excellent Judge which is proper to a weak, delicate, and ap¬ 
prehensive character in the presence of massive strength. 
Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, 
the more terrible. There is no greater bugbear than a strong- 
willed relative in the circle of his own connections. 


XII 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 

It must not be supposed that the life of a personage 
naturally so active as Phoebe could be wholly confined within 
the precincts of the old Pyncheon House. Clifford’s demands 
upon her time were usually satisfied, in those long days, con¬ 
siderably earlier than sunset. Quiet as his daily existence 
seemed, it nevertheless drained all the resources by which 
he lived. It was not physical exercise that overwearied him, 
—for except that he sometimes wrought a little with a hoe, 
or paced the garden-walk, or, in rainy weather, traversed a 
large unoccupied room,—it was his tendency to remain only 
too quiescent, as regarded any toil of the limbs and muscles. 
But, either there was a smouldering fire within him that 
consumed his vital energy, or the monotony that would have 
dragged itself with benumbing effect over a mind differently 
situated was no monotony to Clifford. Possibly, he was in 
a state of second growth and recovery, and was constantly 
assimilating nutriment for his spirit and intellect from 
sights, sounds, and events, which passed as a perfect void to 
persons more practised with the world. As all is activity and 
vicissitude to the new mind of a child, so might it be, like¬ 
wise, to a mind that had undergone a kind of new creation, 
after its long-suspended life. 

Be the cause what it might, Clifford commonly retired to 
rest, thoroughly exhausted, while the sunbeams were still 
melting through his window-curtains, or were thrown with 

179 


180 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


late luster on the chamber wall. And while he thus slept 
early, as other children do, and dreamed of childhood, 
Phoebe was free to follow her own tastes for the remainder 
of the day and evening. 

This was a freedom essential to the health even of a 
character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that 
of Phoebe. The old house, as we have already said, had 
both the dry-rot and the damp-rot in its walls; it was not 
good to breathe no other atmosphere than that. Hepzibah, 
though she had her valuable and redeeming traits, had 
grown to be a kind of lunatic, by imprisoning herself so long 
in one place, with no other company than a single series 
of ideas, and but one affection, and one bitter sense of wrong. 
Clifford, the reader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to 
operate morally on his fellow-creatures, however intimate 
and exclusive their relations with him. But the sympathy 
or magnetism among human beings is more subtile and 
universal than we think; it exists, indeed, among different 
classes of organized life, and vibrates from one to another. 
A flower, for instance, as Phoebe herself observed, always 
began to droop sooner in Clifford’s hand, or Hepzibah’s, 
than in her own; and by the same law, converting her whole 
daily life into a flower-fragrance for these two sickly spirits, 
the blooming girl must inevitably droop and fade much 
sooner than if worn on a younger and happier breast. Unless 
she had now and then indulged her brisk impulses, and 
breathed rural air in a suburban walk, or ocean breezes along 
the shore,—had occasionally obeyed the impulse of Nature, in 
New England girls, by attending a metaphysical or philosoph¬ 
ical lecture, or viewing a seven-mile panorama, or listening 
to a concert,—had gone shopping about the city, ransacking 
entire depots of splendid merchandise, and bringing home a 
ribbon,—had employed, likewise, a little time to read the 
Bible in her chamber, and had stolen a little more to think 


THE DAGUERRE 0 TYPIST 181 

of her mother and her native place,—unless for such moral 
medicines as the above, we should soon have beheld our poor 
Phoebe grow thin and put on a bleached unwholesome aspect, 
and assume strange, shy ways, prophetic of old-maidenhood 
and a cheerless future. 

Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change partly to 
be regretted, although whatever charm it. infringed upon 
was repaired by another, perhaps more precious. She was 
not so constantly gay, but had her moods of thought, which 
Clifford, on the whole, liked better than her former phase 
of unmingled cheerfulness; because now she understood him 
better and more delicately, and sometimes even interpreted 
him to himself. Her eyes looked larger, and darker, and 
deeper; so deep, at some silent moments, that they seemed 
like Artesian wells, down, down, into the infinite. She was 
less girlish than when we first beheld her alighting from the 
omnibus; less girlish, but more a woman. 

The only youthful mind with which Phoebe had an op¬ 
portunity of frequent intercourse was that of the daguerreo- 
typist. Inevitably, by the pressure of the seclusion about 
them, they had been brought into habits of some familiarity. 
Had they met under different circumstances, neither of these 
young persons would have been likely to bestow much 
thought upon the other, unless, indeed, their extreme dis¬ 
similarity should have proved a principle of mutual attrac¬ 
tion. Both, it is true, were characters proper to New Eng¬ 
land life, and possessing a common ground, therefore, in 
their more external developments; but as unlike, in their 
respective interiors, as if their native climes had been at 
world-wide distance. During the early part of their ac¬ 
quaintance, Phoebe had held back rather more than was 
customary with her frank and simple manners from Hol- 
grave’s not very marked advances. Nor was she yet satisfied 
that she knew him well, although they almost daily met and 


182 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


talked together, in a kind, friendly, and what seemed to be 
a familiar way. 

The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phoebe 
something of his history. Young as he was, and had his 
career terminated at the point already attained, there had 
been enough of incident to fill, very creditably, an auto¬ 
biographic volume. A romance on the plan of Gil Bias, 
adapted to American society and manners, would cease to 
be a romance. The experience of many individuals among 
us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal the 
vicissitudes of the Spaniard’s earlier life; while their ulti¬ 
mate success, or the point whither they tend, may be incom¬ 
parably higher than any that a novelist would imagine for 
his hero. Holgrave, as he told Phoebe, somewhat proudly, 
could not boast of his origin, unless as being exceedingly 
humble, nor his education, except that it had been the 
scantiest possible, and obtained by a few winter-months’ 
attendance at a district school. Left early to his own guid¬ 
ance, he had begun to be self-dependent while yet a boy; 
and it was a condition aptly suited to his natural force of 
will. Though now but twenty-two years old (lacking some 
months, which are years in such a life), he had already been, 
first, a country schoolmaster; next, a salesman in a country 
store; and, either at the same time or afterwards, the 
political editor of a country newspaper. He had sub¬ 
sequently traveled New England and the Middle States, as 
a pedlar, in the employment of a Connecticut manufactory 
of cologne-water and other essences. In an episodical way 
he had studied and practised dentistry, and with very flat¬ 
tering success, especially in many of the factory-towns along 
our inland streams. As a supernumerary official, of some kind 
or other, aboard a packet-ship, he had visited Europe, and 
found means, before his return, to see Italy, and part of 
France and Germany. At a later period he had spent some 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 


183 


months in a community of Fourierists. Still more recently he 
had been a public lecturer on Mesmerism, for which science 
(as he assured Phoebe, and, indeed, satisfactorily proved, 
by putting Chanticleer, who happened to be scratching near 
by, to sleep) he had very remarkable endowments. 

His present phase, as a daguerreotypist, was of no more 
importance in his own view, nor likely to be more permanent, 
than any of the preceding ones. It had been taken up with 
the careless alacrity of an adventurer, who had his bread to 
earn. It would be thrown aside as carelessly, whenever he 
should choose to earn his bread by some other equally digres¬ 
sive means. But what was most remarkable, and, perhaps, 
showed a more than common poise in the young man, was 
the fact that, amid all these personal vicissitudes, he had 
never lost his identity. Homeless as he had been,—con¬ 
tinually changing his whereabout, and, therefore, responsible 
neither to public opinion nor to individuals,—putting off 
one exterior, and snatching up another, to be soon shifted 
for a third,—he had never violated the innermost man, but 
had carried his conscience along with him. It was impossible 
to know Holgrave without recognizing this to be the fact. 
Hepzibah had seen it. Phoebe soon saw it, likewise, and 
gave him the sort of confidence wdiich such a certainty in¬ 
spires. She was startled, however, and sometimes repelled, 
—not by any doubt of his integrity to whatever law he 
acknowledged, but by a sense that his law differed from her 
own. He made her uneasy, and seemed to unsettle every¬ 
thing around her, by his lack of reverence for what was 
fixed, unless, at a moment’s warning, it could establish its 
right to hold its ground. 

Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affectionate in 
his nature. He was too calm and cool an observer. Phoebe 
felt his eye, often; his heart, seldom or never. He took a 
certain kind of interest in Hepzibah and her brother, and 


184 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Phoebe herself. He studied them attentively, and allowed 
no slightest circumstance of their individualities to escape 
him. He was ready to do them whatever good he might; 
but, after all, he never exactly made common cause with 
them, nor gave any reliable evidence that he loved them 
better in proportion as he knew them more. In his rela¬ 
tions with them, he seemed to be in quest of mental food, 
not heart-sustenance. Phoebe could not conceive what in¬ 
terested him so much in her friends and herself, intellectually, 
since he cared nothing for them, or, comparatively, so little, 
as objects of human affection. 

Always, in his interviews with Phoebe, the artist made 
especial inquiry as to the welfare of Clifford, whom, except 
at the Sunday festival, he seldom saw. 

“Does he still seem happy?” he asked one day. 

“As happy as a child,” answered Phoebe; “but—like a 
child, too—very easily disturbed.” 

“How disturbed ?” inquired Holgrave. “By things with¬ 
out, or by thoughts within?” 

“I cannot see his thoughts! How should I?” replied 
Phoebe, with simple piquancy. “Very often his humor 
changes without any reason that can be guessed at, just as 
a cloud comes over the sun. Latterly, since I have begun 
to know him better, I feel it to be not quite right to look 
closely into his moods. He has had such a great sorrow, 
that his heart is made all solemn and sacred by it. When 
he is cheerful,—when the sun shines into his mind,—then I 
venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no 
further. It is holy ground where the shadow falls!” 

“How prettily you express this sentiment!” said the 
artist. “I can understand the feeling, without possessing it. 
Had I your opportunities, no scruples would prevent me 
from fathoming Clifford to the full depth of my plummet¬ 
line ! ” 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 185 

“How strange that you should wish it! ” remarked Phoebe, 
involuntarily. “What is Cousin Clifford to you?” 

“Oh, nothing,—of course, nothing!” answered Holgrave, 
with a smile. “Only this is such an odd and incomprehensible 
world! The more I look at it the more it puzzles me, and 
I begin to suspect that a man’s bewilderment is the measure 
of his wisdom. Men and women, and children, too, are such 
strange creatures, that one never can be certain that he 
really knows them; nor ever guess what they have been, from 
what he sees them to be now. Judge Pyncheon! Clifford! 
what a complex riddle—a complexity of complexities—do 
they present! It requires intuitive sympathy, like a young 
girl’s, to solve it. A mere observer, like myself (who never 
have any intuitions, and am, at best, only subtile and acute), 
is pretty certain to go astray.” 

The artist now turned the conversation to themes less 
dark than that which they had touched upon. Phoebe and 
he were young together; nor had Holgrave, in his premature 
experience of life, wasted entirely that beautiful spirit of 
youth, which, gushing forth from one small heart and fancy, 
may diffuse itself over the universe, making it all as bright 
as on the first day of creation. Man’s own youth is the 
world’s youth; at least, he feels as if it were, and imagines 
that the earth’s granite substance is something not yet 
hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he 
likes. So it was with Holgrave. He could talk sagely about 
the world’s old age, but never actually believed what he 
said; he was a young man still, and therefore looked upon 
the world—that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, de¬ 
crepit, without being venerable—as a tender stripling, 
capable of being improved into all that it ought to be, but 
scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of becoming. 
He had that sense, or inward prophecy,—which a young 
man had better never have been born than not to have, 


186 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


and a mature man had better die at once than utterly to 
relinquish,—that we are not doomed to creep on forever 
in the old bad way, but that, this very now, there are the 
harbingers abroad of a golden era, to be accomplished in his 
own lifetime. It seemed to Holgrave—as doubtless it has 
seemed to the hopeful of every century since the epoch of 
Adam’s grandchildren—that in this age, more than ever 
before, the moss-grown and rotten Past is to be torn down, 
and lifeless institutions to be thrust out of the way, and 
their dead corpses buried, and everything to begin anew. 

As to the main point,—may we never live to doubt it!— 
as to the better centuries that are coming, the artist was 
surely right. His error lay in supposing that this age, more 
than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered 
garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of 
gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in applying 
his own little life-span as the measure of an interminable 
achievement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mat¬ 
tered anything to the great end in view whether he himself 
should contend for it or against it. Yet it was well for him 
to think so. This enthusiasm, infusing itself through the 
calmness of his character, and thus taking an aspect of 
settled thought and wisdom, would serve to keep his youth 
pure, and make his aspirations high. And when, with the 
years settling down more weightily upon him, his early faith 
should be modified by inevitable experience, it would be 
with no harsh and sudden revolution of his sentiments. He 
would still have faith in man’s brightening destiny, and 
perhaps love him all the better, as he should recognize his 
helplessness in his own behalf; and the haughty faith, with 
which he began life, would be well bartered for a far humbler- 
one at its close, in discerning that man’s best directed effort 
accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is the sole worker 
of realities. 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 


187 


Holgrave had read very little, and that little in passing 
through the thoroughfare of life, where.the mystic language 
of his books was necessarily mixed up with the babble of 
the multitude, so that both one and the other were apt to 
lose any sense that might have been properly their own. He 
considered himself a thinker, and was certainly of a thoughtful 
turn, but, with his own path to discover, had perhaps 
hardly yet reached the point where an educated man begins to 
think. The true value of his character lay in that deep 
consciousness of inward strength, which made all his past 
vicissitudes seem merely like a change of garments; in that 
enthusiasm, so quiet that he scarcely knew of its existence, but 
which gave a warmth to everything that he laid his hand 
on; in that personal ambition, hidden—from his own as 
well as other eyes—among his more generous impulses, but 
in which lurked a certain efficacy, that might solidify him 
from a theorist into the champion of some practicable cause. 
Altogether in his culture and want of culture,—in his crude, 
wild, and misty philosophy, and the practical experience that 
counteracted some of its tendencies; in his magnanimous zeal 
for man’s welfare, and his recklessness of whatever the ages 
had established in man’s behalf; in his faith, and in his in¬ 
fidelity; in what he had, and in what he lacked,—the artist 
might fitly enough stand forth as the representative of many 
compeers in his native land. 

His career it would be difficult to prefigure. There ap¬ 
peared to be qualities in Holgrave, such as, in a country 
where everything is free to the hand that can grasp it, could 
hardly fail to put some of the world’s prizes within his reach. 
But these matters are delightfully uncertain. At almost 
every step in life, we meet with young men of just about 
Holgrave’s age, for whom we anticipate wonderful things, 
but of whom, even after much and careful inquiry, we never 
happen to hear another word. The effervescence of youth 


188 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

and passion, and the fresh gloss of the intellect and imagina¬ 
tion, endow them with a false brilliancy, which makes fools 
of themselves and other people. Like certain chintzes, cali¬ 
coes, and ginghams, they show finely in their first newness, 
but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober 
aspect after washing-day. 

But our business is with Holgrave as we find him on this 
particular afternoon, and in the arbor of the Pyncheon gar¬ 
den. In that point of view, it was a pleasant sight to behold 
this young man, with so much faith in himself, and so fair 
an appearance of admirable powers,—so little harmed, too, 
by the many tests that had tried his metal,—it was pleasant 
to see him in his kindly intercourse with Phoebe. Her thought 
had scarcely done him justice when it pronounced him cold; 
or, if so, he had grown warmer now. Without such purpose 
on her part, and unconsciously on his, she made the House 
of the Seven Gables like a home to him, and the garden a 
familiar precinct. With the insight on which he prided 
himself, he fancied that he could look through Phoebe, and 
all around her, and could read her off like a page of a child’s 
story-book. But these transparent natures are often decep¬ 
tive in their depth; those pebbles at the bottom of the foun¬ 
tain are farther from us than we think. Thus the artist, 
whatever he might judge of Phoebe’s capacity, was beguiled, 
by some silent charm of hers, to talk freely of what he 
dreamed of doing in the world. He poured himself out as 
to another self. Very possibly, he forgot Phoebe while he 
talked to her, and was moved only by the inevitable tend¬ 
ency of thought, when rendered sympathetic by enthusiasm 
and emotion, to flow into the first safe reservoir which it 
finds. But, had you peeped at them through the chinks of 
the garden-fence, the young man’s earnestness and height¬ 
ened color might have led you to suppose that he was making 
love to the young girl! 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 189 

At length, something was said by Holgrave that made it 
apposite for Phoebe to inquire what had first brought him 
acquainted with her cousin Hepzibah, and why he now chose 
to lodge in the desolate old Pyncheon House. Without 
directly answering her, he turned from the Future, which 
had heretofore been the theme of his discourse, and began 
to speak of the influences of the Past. One subject, indeed, 
is but the reverberation of the other. 

“Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?” cried he, 
keeping up the earnest note of his preceding conversation. 
“It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body! In fact, 
the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste 
all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, 
his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs 
to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will 
startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times,—to 
Death, if we give the matter the right word! ” . 

“But I do not see it,” observed Phoebe. 

“For example, then,” continued Holgrave: “a dead man, 
if he happen to have made a will, disposes of wealth no 
longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in 
accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than 
he. A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats; and living 
judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read 
in dead men’s books! We laugh at dead men’s jokes, and 
cry at dead men’s pathos! We are sick of dead men’s 
diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies 
with which dead doctors killed their patients! We worship 
the living Deity according to dead men’s forms and creeds. 
Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a dead 
man’s icy hand obstructs us! Turn our eyes to what point 
we may, a dead man’s white, immitigable face encounters 
them, and freezes our very heart! And we must be dead 
ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influence 


190 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


on our own world, which will then be no longer our world, 
but the world of another generation, with which we shall 
have no shadow of a right to interfere. I ought to have said, 
too, that we live in dead men’s houses; as, for instance, in 
this of the Seven Gables! ” 

“And why not,” said Phoebe, “so long as we can be com¬ 
fortable in them?” 

“But we shall live to see the day, I trust,” went on the 
artist, “when no man shall build his house for posterity. 
Why should he ? He might just as reasonably order a durable 
suit of clothes,—leather, or gutta-percha, or whatever else 
lasts longest,—so that his great-grandchildren should have 
the benefit of them, and cut precisely the same figure in the 
world that he himself does. If each generation were allowed 
and expected to build its own houses, that single change, 
comparatively unimportant in itself, would imply almost 
every reform , which society is now suffering for. I doubt 
whether even our public edifices—our capitols, state- 
houses, court-houses, city-hall, and churches—ought to be 
built of such permanent materials as stone or brick. It 
were better that they should crumble to ruin once in 
twenty years or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to 
examine into and reform the institutions which they 
symbolize.” 

“How you hate everything old!” said Phoebe, in dismay. 
“It makes me dizzy to think of such a shifting world!” 

“I certainly love nothing mouldy,” answered Holgrave. 
“Now, this old Pyncheon House! Is it a wholesome place 
to live in, with its black shingles, and the green moss that 
shows how damp they are?—its dark, low-studded rooms? 
—its grime and sordidness, which are the crystallization on 
its walls of the human breath, that has been drawn and ex¬ 
haled here in discontent and anguish? The house ought to 
be purified with fire,—purified till only its ashes remain! ” 


THE D AGUERREOTYPIST 191 

“Then why do you live in it?” asked Phoebe, a little 
piqued. 

“Oh, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books, how¬ 
ever,” replied Holgrave. “The house, in my view, is ex¬ 
pressive of that odious and abominable Past, with all its 
bad influences, against which I have just been declaiming. 
I dwell in it for a while, that I may know the better how 
to hate it. By the by, did you ever hear the story of 
Maule, the wizard, and what happened between him and 
your immeasurably great-grandfather?” 

“Yes, indeed!” said Phoebe; “I heard it long ago, from my 
father, and two or three times from my cousin Hepzibah, 
in the month that I have been here. She seems to think 
that all the calamities of the Pyncheons began from that 
quarrel with the wizard, as you call him. And you, Mr. 
Holgrave, look as if you thought so too! How singular, 
that you should believe what is so very absurd, when you 
reject many things that are a great deal worthier of credit!” 

“I do believe it,” said the artist, seriously; “not as a super¬ 
stition, however, but as proved by unquestionable facts, and 
as exemplifying a theory. Now, see: under those seven 
gables, at which we now look up,—and which old Colonel 
Pyncheon meant to be the house of his descendants, in pros¬ 
perity and happiness, down to an epoch far beyond the 
present,—under that roof, through a portion of three cen¬ 
turies, there has been perpetual remorse of conscience, a con¬ 
stantly defeated hope, strife amongst kindred, various misery, 
a strange form of death, dark suspicion, unspeakable disgrace, 
—all, or most of which calamity I have the means of tracing 
to the old Puritan’s inordinate desire to plant and endow a 
family. To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of 
most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth 
is, that, once in every half-century, at longest, a family 
should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, 


192 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

and forget all about its ancestors. Human blood, in order 
to keep its freshness, should run in hidden streams, as the 
water of an aqueduct is conveyed in subterranean pipes. In 
the family existence of these Pyncheons, for instance,—for¬ 
give me, Phoebe; but I cannot think of you as one of them,— 
in their brief New England pedigree, there has been time 
enough to infect them all with one kind of lunacy or another! ” 

“You speak very unceremoniously of my kindred,” said 
Phoebe, debating with herself whether she ought to take 
offence. 

“I speak true thoughts of a true mind!” answered Hol- 
grave, with a vehemence which Phoebe had not before wit¬ 
nessed in him. “The truth is as I say! Furthermore, the 
original perpetrator and father of this mischief appears to 
have perpetuated himself, and still walks the street,—at 
least, his very image, in mind and body,—with the fairest 
prospect of transmitting to posterity as rich and as wretched 
an inheritance as he has received! Do you remember the 
daguerreotype, and its resemblance to the old portrait?” 

“How strangely in earnest you are!” exclaimed Phoebe, 
looking at him with surprise and perplexity; half alarmed 
and partly inclined to laugh. “You talk of the lunacy of 
the Pyncheons; is it contagious?” 

“I understand you!” said the artist, coloring and laughing. 
“I believe I am a little mad. This subject has taken hold of 
my mind with the strangest tenacity of clutch since I have 
lodged in yonder old gable. As one method of throwing it 
off, I have put an incident of the Pyncheon family history, 
with which I happen to be acquainted, into the form of a 
legend, and mean to publish it in a magazine.” 

“Do you write for the magazines?” inquired Phoebe. 

“Is it possible you did not know it?” cried Holgrave. 
“Well, such is literary fame! Yes, Miss Phoebe Pyncheon, 
among the multitude of my marvelous gifts I have that of 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 


193 


writing stories; and my name has figured, I can assure you, 
on the covers of Graham and Godey, making as respectable 
an appearance, for aught I could see, as any of the canonized 
bead-roll with which it was associated. In the humorous 
line, I am thought to have a very pretty way with me; and as 
for pathos, I am as provocative of tears as an onion. But 
shall I read you my story?” 

“Yes, if it is not very long,” said Phoebe,—and added 
laughingly,—“nor very dull.” 

As this latter point was one which the daguerreotypist 
could not decide for himself, he forthwith produced his roll 
of manuscript, and, while the late sunbeams gilded the 
seven gables, began to read. 


XIII 


ALICE PYNCHEON 

There was a message brought, one day, from the wor¬ 
shipful Gervayse Pyncheon to young Matthew Maule, the 
carpenter, desiring his immediate presence at the House of 
the Seven Gables. 

“And what does your master want with me?” said the 
carpenter to Mr. Pyncheon’s black servant. “Does the house 
need any repair? Well it may, by this time; and no blame 
to my father who built it, neither! I was reading the old 
Colonel’s tombstone, no longer ago than last Sabbath; and, 
reckoning from that date, the house has stood seven-and- 
thirty years. No wonder if there should be a job to do on 
the roof.” 

“Don’t know what massa wants,” answered Scipio. “The 
house is a berry good house, and old Colonel Pyncheon 
think so too, I reckon;—else why the old man haunt it so, 
and frighten a poor nigga, as he does ?” 

“Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know that I’m 
coming,” said the carpenter, with a laugh. “For a fair, 
workmanlike job, he’ll find me his man. And so the house 
is haunted, is it? It will take a tighter workman than I am 
to keep the spirits out of the Seven Gables. Even if the 
Colonel would be quiet,” he added, muttering to himself, 
“my old grandfather, the wizard, will be pretty sure to stick 
to the Pyncheons as long as their walls hold together.” 

“What’s that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?” 

194 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


195 


asked Scipio. “And what for do you look so black at me?” 

“No matter, darky!” said the carpenter. “Do you think 
nobody is to look black but yourself? Go tell your master 
I’m coming; and if you happen to see Mistress Alice, his 
daughter, give Matthew Maule’s humble respects to her. 
She has brought a fair face from Italy,—fair, and gentle, 
and proud,—has that same Alice Pyncheon!” 

“He talk of Mistress Alice!” cried Scipio, as he returned 
from his errand. “The low carpenter-man! He no business 
so much as to look at her a great way off!” 

This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must be 
observed, was a person little understood, and not very gen¬ 
erally liked, in the town where he resided; not that anything 
could be alleged against his integrity, or his skill and 
diligence in the handicraft which he exercised. The 
aversion (as it might justly be called) with which 
many persons regarded him was partly the result of 
his own character and deportment, and partly an inheri¬ 
tance. 

He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, one 
of the early settlers of the town, and who had been a famous 
and terrible wizard in his day. This old reprobate was one 
of the sufferers when Cotton Mather, and his brother min¬ 
isters, and the learned judges, and other wise men, and Sir 
William Phipps, the sagacious governor, made such laudable 
efforts to weaken the great enemy of souls, by sending a 
multitude of his adherents up the rocky pathway of Gallows 
Hill. Since those days, no doubt, it had grown to be sus¬ 
pected that, in consequence of an unfortunate overdoing 
of a work praiseworthy in itself, the proceedings against the 
witches had proved far less acceptable to the Beneficent 
Father than to that very Arch Enemy whom they were in¬ 
tended to distress and utterly overwhelm. It is not the less 
certain, however, that awe and terror brooded over the 


196 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


memories of those who died for this horrible crime of witch¬ 
craft. Their graves, in the crevices of the rocks, were sup¬ 
posed to be incapable of retaining the occupants who had 
been so hastily thrust into them. Old Matthew Maule, 
especially, was known to have as little hesitation or difficulty 
in rising out of his grave as an ordinary man in getting out 
of bed, and was as often seen at midnight as living people at 
noonday. This pestilent wizard (in whom his just punish¬ 
ment seemed to have wrought no manner of amendment) 
had an inveterate habit of haunting a certain mansion, styled 
the House of the Seven Gables, against the owner of which 
he pretended to hold an unsettled claim for ground-rent. 
The ghost, it appears,—with the pertinacity which was one 
of his distinguishing characteristics while alive,—insisted 
that he was the rightful proprietor of the site upon which the 
house stood. His terms were, that either the aforesaid ground- 
rent, from the day when the cellar began to be dug, should 
be paid down, or the mansion itself given up; else he, the 
ghostly creditor, would have his finger in all the affairs of 
the Pyncheons, and make everything go wrong with them, 
though it should be a thousand years after his death. It 
was a wild story, perhaps, but seemed not altogether so 
incredible to those who could remember what an inflexibly 
obstinate old fellow this wizard Maule had been. 

Now, the wizard’s grandson, the young Matthew Maule 
of our story, was popularly supposed to have inherited 
some of his ancestor’s questionable traits. It is wonderful 
how many absurdities were promulgated in reference to the 
young man. He was fabled, for example, to have a strange 
power of getting into people’s dreams, and regulating mat¬ 
ters there according to his own fancy, pretty much like the 
stage-manager of a theater. There was a great deal of talk 
among the neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones, about 
what they called the witchcraft of Maule’s eye. Some said 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


197 


that he could look into people’s minds; others, that, by the 
marvelous power of this eye, he could draw people into his 
own mind, or send them, if he pleased, to do errands to 
his grandfather, in the spiritual world; others, again, that 
it was what is termed an Evil Eye, and possessed the valuable 
faculty of blighting corn, and drying children into mummies 
with the heartburn. But, after all, what worked most to 
the young carpenter’s disadvantage was, first, the reserve 
and sternness of his natural disposition, and next, the fact 
of his not being a church-communicant, and the suspicion 
of his holding heretical tenets in matters of religion and 
polity. 

After receiving Mr. Pyncheon’s message, the carpenter 
merely tarried to finish a small job, which he happened to 
have in hand, and then took his way towards the House of 
the Seven Gables. This noted edifice, though its style might 
be getting a little out of fashion, was still as respectable a 
family residence as that of any gentleman in town. The 
present owner, Gervayse Pyncheon, was said to have con¬ 
tracted a dislike to the house, in consequence of a shock to 
his sensibility, in early childhood, from the sudden death 
of his grandfather. In the very act of running to climb 
Colonel Pyncheon’s knee, the boy had discovered the old 
Puritan to be a corpse! On arriving at manhood, Mr. Pyn¬ 
cheon had visited England, where he married a lady of for¬ 
tune, and had subsequently spent many years, partly in 
the mother country, and partly in various cities on the con¬ 
tinent of Europe. During this period, the family mansion 
had been consigned to the charge of a kinsman, who was 
allowed to make it his home for the time being, in considera¬ 
tion of keeping the premises in thorough repair. So faith¬ 
fully had this contract been fulfilled, that now, as the car¬ 
penter approached the house, his practised eye could detect 
nothing to criticise in its condition. The peaks of the seven 


198 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


gables rose up sharply; the shingled roof looked thoroughly 
water-tight; and the glittering plaster-work entirely cov¬ 
ered the exterior walls, and sparkled in the October sun, as 
if it had been new only a week ago. 

The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like 
the cheery expression of comfortable activity in the human 
countenance. You could see, at once, that there was the 
stir of a large family within it. A huge load of oak-wood 
was passing through the gateway, towards the outbuildings 
in the rear; the fat cook—or probably it might be the house¬ 
keeper—stood at the side door, bargaining for some turkeys 
and poultry, which a countryman had brought for sale. Now 
and then a maid-servant, neatly dressed, and now the shining 
sable face of a slave, might be seen bustling across the win¬ 
dows, in the lower part of the house. At an open window 
of a room in the second story, hanging over some pots of 
beautiful and delicate flowers,—exotics, but which had never 
known a more genial sunshine than that of the New England 
autumn,—was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like the 
flowers, and beautiful and delicate as they. Her presence 
imparted an indescribable grace and faint witchery to the 
whole edifice. In other respects, it was a substantial, jolly¬ 
looking mansion, and seemed fit to be the residence of a 
patriarch, who might establish his own headquarters in the 
front gable and assign one of the remainder to each of his 
six children, while the great chimney in the center should 
symbolize the old fellow’s hospitable heart, which kept them 
all warm, and made a great whole of the seven smaller ones. 

There was a vertical sundial on the front gable; and as 
the carpenter passed beneath it, he looked up and noted the 
hour. 

“Three o’clock!” said he to himself. “My father told me 
that dial was put up only an hour before the old Colonel’s 
death. How truly it has kept time these seven-and-thirty 


ALICE PYNCHEON 199 

years past! The shadow creeps and creeps, and is always 
looking over the shoulder of the sunshine!” 

It might have befitted a craftsman, like Matthew Maule, 
on being sent for to a gentleman’s house, to go to the back 
door, where servants and work-people were usually ad¬ 
mitted; or at least to the side entrance, where the better 
class of tradesmen made application. But the carpenter had 
a great deal of pride and stiffness in his nature; and, at this 
moment, moreover, his heart was bitter with the sense of 
hereditary wrong, because he considered the great Pyncheon 
House to be standing on soil which should have been his 
own. On this very site, beside a spring of delicious water, 
his grandfather had felled the pine-trees and built a cottage, 
in which children had been born to him; and it was only 
from a dead man’s stiffened fingers that Colonel Pyncheon 
had wrested away the title-deeds. So young Maule went 
straight to the principal entrance, beneath a portal of 
carved oak, and gave such a peal of the iron knocker that 
you would have imagined the stern old wizard himself to 
be standing at the threshold. 

Black Scipio answered the summons, in a prodigious hurry; 
but showed the whites of his eyes, in amazement, on behold¬ 
ing only the carpenter. 

“Lord-a-mercy! what a great man he be, this carpenter 
fellow!” mumbled Scipio, down in his throat. “Anybody 
think he beat on the door with his biggest hammer!” 

“Here I am!” said Maule, sternly. “Show me the way 
to your master’s parlor! ” 

As he stept into the house, a note of sweet and melancholy 
music thrilled and vibrated along the passage-way, pro¬ 
ceeding from one of the rooms above stairs. It was the 
harpsichord which Alice Pyncheon had brought with her 
from beyond the sea. The fair Alice bestowed most of her 
maiden leisure between flowers and music, although the for- 


200 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


mer were apt to droop, and the melodies were often sad. 
She was of foreign education, and could not take kindly to 
the New England modes of life, in which nothing beautiful 
had ever been developed. 

As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting Maule’s 
arrival, black Scipio, of course, lost no time in ushering the 
carpenter into his master’s presence. The room in which 
this gentleman sat was a parlor of moderate size, looking 
out upon the garden of the house, and having its windows 
partly shadowed by the foliage of fruit-trees. It was Mr. 
Pyncheon’s peculiar apartment, and was provided with fur¬ 
niture, in an elegant and costly style, principally from Paris; 
the floor (which was unusual at that day) being covered 
with a carpet, so skilfully and richly wrought that it seemed 
to glow as with living flowers. In one corner stood a marble 
woman, to whom her own beauty was the sole and sufficient 
garment. Some pictures—that looked old, and had a mellow 
tinge diffused through all their artful splendor—hung on 
the walls. Near the fireplace was a large and very beautiful 
cabinet of ebony, inlaid with ivory; a piece of antique furni¬ 
ture, which Mr. Pyncheon had bought in Venice, and which 
he used as the treasure-place for medals, ancient coins, and 
whatever small and valuable curiosities he had picked up on 
his travels. Through all this variety of decoration, however, 
the room showed its original characteristics; its low stud, 
its cross-beam, its chimney-piece, with the old-fashioned 
Dutch tiles; so that it was the emblem of a mind indus¬ 
triously stored with foreign ideas, and elaborated into 
artificial refinement, but neither larger, nor, in its proper 
self, more elegant than before. 

There were two objects that appeared rather out of place 
in this very handsomely furnished room. One was a large 
map, or surveyor’s plan, of a tract of land, which looked as 
if it had been drawn a good many years ago, and was now 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


201 


dingy with smoke, and soiled, here and there, with the touch - 
of fingers. The other was a portrait of a stern old man, in 
a Puritan garb, painted roughly, but with a bold effect, and 
a remarkably strong expression of character. 

At a small table, before a fire of English sea-coal, sat Mr. 
Pyncheon, sipping coffee, which had grown to be a very 
favorite beverage with him in France. He was a middle- 
aged and really handsome man, with a wig flowing down 
upon his shoulders; his coat was of blue velvet, with lace 
on the borders and at the button-holes; and the firelight 
glistened on the spacious breadth of his waistcoat, which 
was flowered all over with gold. On the entrance of Scipio, 
ushering in the carpenter, Mr. Pyncheon turned partly round, 
but resumed his former position, and proceeded deliberately 
to finish his cup of coffee, without immediate notice of the 
guest whom he had summoned to his presence. It was not 
that he intended any rudeness or improper neglect,—which, 
indeed, he would have blushed to be guilty of,—but it never 
occurred to him that a person in Maule’s station had a claim 
on his courtesy, or would trouble himself about it one way 
or the other. 

The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth, 
and turned himself about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in 
the face. 

“You sent for me,” said he. “Be pleased to explain your 
business, that X may go back to my own affairs.” 

“Ah! excuse me,” said Mr. Pyncheon, quietly. “I did not 
mean to tax your time without a recompense. Your name, 
I think, is Maule,—Thomas or Matthew Maule,—a son or 
grandson of the builder of this house ?” 

“Matthew Maule,” replied the carpenter,—“son of him 
who built the house,—grandson of the rightful proprietor 
of the soil.” 

“I know the dispute to which you allude,” observed Mr. 


202 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

Pyncheon with undisturbed equanimity. “I am well aware 
that my grandfather was compelled to resort to a suit at 
law, in order to establish his claim to the foundation-site 
of this edifice. We will not, if you please, renew the discussion. 
The matter was settled at the time, and by the competent 
authorities,—equitably, it is to be presumed,—and, at all 
events, irrevocably. Yet, singularly enough, there is an 
incidental reference to this very subject in what I am now 
about to say to you. And this same inveterate grudge,— 
excuse me, I mean no offence,—this irritability, which you 
have just shown, is not entirely aside from the matter.” 

“If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyn¬ 
cheon,said the carpenter, “in a man’s natural resentment 
for the wrongs done to his blood, you are welcome to it! ” 

“I take you at your word, Goodman Maule,” said the 
owner of the Seven Gables, with a smile, “and will proceed 
to suggest a mode in which your hereditary resentments— 
justifiable, or otherwise—may have had a bearing on my 
affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon 
family, ever since my grandfather’s days, have been prosecut¬ 
ing a still unsettled claim to a very large extent of territory 
at the Eastward?” 

“Often,” replied Maule,—and it is said that a smile 
came over his face,—“very often,—from my father!” 

“This claim,” continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a 
moment, as if to consider what the carpenter’s smile might 
mean, “appeared to be on the very verge of a settlement 
and full allowance, at the period of my grandfather’s decease. 
It was well known, to those in his confidence, that he antici¬ 
pated neither difficulty nor delay. Now, Colonel Pyncheon, 
I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted with 
public and private business, and not at all the person to 
cherish ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following out of 
an impracticable scheme. It is obvious to conclude, there- 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


203 


fore, that he had grounds, not apparent to his heirs, for his 
confident anticipation of success in the matter of this East¬ 
ern claim. In a word, I believe,—and my legal advisers 
coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is authorized, to a 
certain extent, by the family traditions,—that my grand¬ 
father was in possession of some deed, or other document, 
essential to this claim, but which has since disappeared/’ 

“Very likely,” said Matthew Maule,—and again, it is 
said, there was a dark smile on his face,—“but what can a 
poor carpenter have to do with the grand affairs of the 
Pyncheon family?” 

“Perhaps nothing,” returned Mr. Pyncheon,—“possibly, 
much! ” 

Here ensued a great many words between Matthew Maule 
and the proprietor of the Seven Gables, on the subject which 
the latter had thus broached. It seems (although Mr. Pyn¬ 
cheon had some hesitation in referring to stories so exceed¬ 
ingly absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief pointed 
to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing be¬ 
tween the family of the Maules and these vast unrealized 
possessions of the Pyncheons. It was an ordinary saying 
that the old wizard, hanged though he was, had obtained 
the best end of the bargain in his contest with Colonel Pyn¬ 
cheon; inasmuch as he had got possession of the great 
Eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden- 
ground. A very aged woman, recently dead, had often used 
the metaphorical expression, in her fireside talk, that miles 
and miles of the Pyncheon lands had been shoveled into 
Maule’s grave; which, by the by, was but a very shallow 
nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill. 
Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for the miss¬ 
ing document, it was a by-word that it would never be found, 
unless in the wizard’s skeleton hand. So much weight had 
the shrewd lawyers assigned to these fables, that (but Mr.. 


204 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the carpenter of the 
fact) they had secretly caused the wizard’s grave to 
be searched. Nothing was discovered, however, except 
that, unaccountably, the right hand of the skeleton was 
gone. 

Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion of 
these popular rumors could be traced, though rather doubt¬ 
fully and indistinctly, to chance words and obscure hints 
of the executed wizard’s son, and the father of this present 
Matthew Maule. And here Mr. Pyncheon could bring an 
item of his own personal evidence into play. Though but 
a child at the time, he either remembered or fancied that 
Matthew’s father had had some job to perform, on the day 
before, or possibly the very morning of the Colonel’s decease, 
in the private room where he and the carpenter were at this 
moment talking. Certain papers belonging to Colonel Pyn¬ 
cheon, as his grandson distinctly recollected, had been 
spread out on the table. 

Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion. 

“My father,” he said,—but still there was that dark smile, 
making a riddle of his countenance,—“my father was an 
honester man than the bloody old Colonel! Not to get his 
rights back again would he have carried off one of those 
papers! ” 

“I shall not bandy words with you,” observed the foreign- 
bred Mr. Pyncheon, with haughty composure. “Nor will 
it become me to resent any rudeness towards either my 
grandfather or myself. A gentleman, before seeking inter¬ 
course with a person'of your station and habits, will first 
consider whether the urgency of the end may compensate 
for the disagreeableness of the means. It does so in the 
present instance.” 

He then renewed the conversation, and made great 
pecuniary offers to the carpenter, in case the latter should 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


205 


give information leading to the discovery of the lost docu¬ 
ment, and the consequent success of the Eastern claim. For 
a long time Matthew Maule is said to have turned a cold 
ear to these propositions. At last, however, with a strange 
kind of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Pyncheon would 
make over to him the old wizard’s homestead-ground, to-, 
gether with the House of the Seven Gables, now standing on 
it, in requital of the documentary evidence so urgently re¬ 
quired. 

The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copy¬ 
ing all its extravagances, my narrative essentially follows) 
here gives an account of some very strange behavior on the 
part of Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait. This picture, it must 
be understood, was supposed to be so intimately connected 
with the fate of the house, and so magically built into its 
walls, that, if once it should be removed, that very instant 
the whole edifice would come thundering down in a heap 
of dusty ruin. All through the foregoing conversation be¬ 
tween Mr. Pyncheon and the carpenter, the portrait had 
been frowning, clenching its fist, and giving many such proofs 
of excessive discomposure, but without attracting the notice 
of either of the two colloquists. And finally, at Matthew 
Maule’s audacious suggestion of a transfer of the seven- 
gabled structure, the ghostly portrait is averred to have lost 
all patience, and to have shown itself on the point of descend¬ 
ing bodily from its frame. But such incredible incidents are 
merely to be mentioned aside. 

“Give up this house!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in amaze¬ 
ment at the proposal. “Were I to do so, my grandfather 
would not rest quiet in his grave! ” 

“He never has, if all stories are true,” remarked the car¬ 
penter, composedly. “But that matter concerns his grandson 
more than it does Matthew Maule. I have no other terms 
to propose.” 


206 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with Maule’s 
conditions, still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyncheon was of 
opinion that they might at least be made matter of discus¬ 
sion. He himself had no personal attachment for the house, 
nor any pleasant associations connected with his childish 
residence in it. On the contrary, after seven-and-thirty years, 
the presence of his dead grandfather seemed still to pervade 
it, as on that morning when the affrighted boy had beheld 
him, with so ghastly an aspect, stiffening in his chair. His 
long abode in foreign parts, moreover, and familiarity with 
many of the castles and ancestral halls of England, and the 
marble palaces of Italy, had caused him to look contemptu¬ 
ously at the House of the Seven Gables, whether in point 
of splendor or convenience. It was a mansion exceedingly 
inadequate to the style of living which it would be incumbent 
on Mr. Pyncheon to support, after realizing his territorial 
rights. His steward might deign to occupy it, but never, 
certainly, the great landed proprietor himself. In the event 
of success, indeed, it was his purpose to return to England; 
nor, to say the truth, would he recently have quitted that 
more congenial home, had not his own fortune, as well as his 
deceased wife’s, begun to give symptoms of exhaustion. The 
Eastern claim once fairly settled, and put upon the firm 
basis of actual possession, Mr. Pyncheon’s property—to be 
measured by miles, not acres—would be worth an earldom, 
and would reasonably entitle him to solicit, or enable him 
to purchase, that elevated dignity from the British monarch. 
Lord Pyncheon!—or the Earl of Waldo!—how could such 
a magnate be expected to contract his grandeur within the 
pitiful compass of seven shingled gables? 

In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the carpen¬ 
ter’s terms appeared so ridiculously easy that Mr. Pyncheon 
could scarcely forbear laughing in his face. He was quite 
ashamed, after the foregoing reflections, to propose any 


ALICE PYNCHEON 207 

diminution of so moderate a recompense for the immense 
service to be rendered. 

“I consent to your proposition, Maule,” cried he. “Put 
me in possession of the document essential to establish my 
rights, and the House of the Seven Gables is your own! ” 

According to some versions of the story, a regular con¬ 
tract to the above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, and 
signed and sealed in the presence of witnesses. Others say 
that Matthew Maule was contented with a private written 
agreement, in which Mr. Pyncheon pledged his honor and 
integrity to the fulfilment of the terms concluded upon. The 
gentleman then ordered wine, which he and the carpenter 
drank together, in confirmation of their bargain. During the 
whole preceding discussion and subsequent formalities, the 
old Puritan’s portrait seems to have persisted in its shadowy ' 
gestures of disapproval; but without effect, except that, as 
Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied glass, he thought he 
beheld his grandfather frown. 

“This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected 
my brain already,” he observed, after a somewhat startled 
look at the picture. “On returning to Europe, I shall con¬ 
fine myself to the more delicate vintages of Italy and France, 
the best of which will not bear transportation.” 

“My Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, and 
wherever he pleases,” replied the carpenter, as if he had 
been privy to Mr. Pyncheon’s ambitious projects. “But 
first, sir, if you desire tidings of this lost document, I must 
crave the favor of a little talk with your fair daughter Alice.” 

“You are mad, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, 
haughtily; and now, at last, there was anger mixed up with 
his pride. “What can my daughter have to do with a busi¬ 
ness like this?” 

Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter’s part, the 
proprietor of the Seven Gables was even more thunder- 


208 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


struck than at the cool proposition to surrender his house. 
There was, at least, an assignable motive for the first 
stipulation; there appeared to be none whatever for the last. 
Nevertheless, Matthew Maule sturdily insisted on the young 
lady being summoned, and even gave her father to under¬ 
stand, in a mysterious kind of explanation,—which made 
the matter considerably darker than it looked before,—that 
the only chance of acquiring the requisite knowledge was 
through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and virgin in¬ 
telligence, like that of the fair Alice. Not to encumber our 
story with Mr. Pyncheon’s scruples, whether of conscience, 
pride, or fatherly affection, he at length ordered his daughter 
to be called. He well knew that she was in her chamber, and 
engaged in no occupation that could not readily be laid 
aside; for, as it happened, ever since Alice’s name had been 
spoken, both her father and the carpenter had heard the 
sad and sweet music of her harpsichord, and the airier 
melancholy of her accompanying voice. 

So Alice Pyncheon was summoned and appeared. A por¬ 
trait of this young lady, painted by a Venetian artist, and 
left by her father in England, is said to have fallen into the 
hands of the present Duke of Devonshire, and to be now 
preserved at Chatsworth; not on account of ^ny associations 
with the original, but for its value as a picture, and the 
high character of beauty in the countenance. If ever there 
was a lady born, and set apart from the world’s vulgar mass 
by a certain gentle and cold stateliness, it was this very 
Alice Pyncheon. Yet there was the womanly mixture in 
her; the tenderness, or, at least, the tender capabilities. 
For the sake of that redeeming quality, a man of generous 
nature would have forgiven all her pride, and have been 
content, almost, to lie down in her path, and let Alice set 
her slender foot upon his heart. All that he would have 
required was simply the acknowledgment that he was indeed 


ALICE PYNCHEON 209 

a man-, and a fellow-being, moulded of the same elements 
as she. 

As Alice came into the room, her eyes fell upon the car¬ 
penter, who was standing near its center, clad in a green 
woolen jacket, a pair of loose breeches, open at the knees, 
and with a long pocket for his rule, the end of which pro¬ 
truded; it was as proper a mark of the artisan’s calling, as 
Mr. Pyncheon’s full-dress sword of that gentleman’s 
aristocratic pretensions. A glow of artistic approval bright¬ 
ened over Alice Pyncheon’s face; she was struck with ad¬ 
miration—which she made no attempt to conceal—of the 
remarkable comeliness, strength, and energy of Maule’s 
figure. But that admiring glance (which most other men, 
perhaps, would have cherished as a sweet recollection, all 
through life) the carpenter never forgave. It must have 
been the devil himself that made Maule so subtile in his 
perception. 

“Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute beast?” 
thought he, Setting his teeth. “She shall know whether I 
have a human spirit; and the worse for her, if it prove 
stronger than her own!” 

“My father, you sent for me,” said Alice, in her sweet and 
harp-like voice. “But, if you have business with this young 
man, pray let me go again. You know I do not love this 
room, in spite of that Claude, with which you try to bring 
back sunny recollections.” 

“Stay a moment, young lady, if you please! ” said Matthew 
Maule. “My business with your father is over. With 
yourself, it is now to begin!” 

Alice looked towards her father, in surprise and inquiry. 

“Yes, Alice,” said Mr. Pyncheon, with some disturbance 
and confusion. “This young man—his name is Matthew 
Maule—professes, so far as I can understand him, to be 
able to discover, through your means, a certain paper or 


210 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


parchment, which was missing long before your birth. The 
importance of the document in question renders it advisable 
to neglect no possible, even if improbable, method of re¬ 
gaining it. You will therefore oblige me, my dear Alice, by 
answering this person’s inquiries, and complying with his 
lawful and reasonable requests, so far as they may appear 
to have the aforesaid object in view. As I shall remain in 
the room, you need apprehend no rude nor unbecoming de¬ 
portment, on the young man’s part; and, at your slightest 
wish, of course, the investigation, or whatever we may call 
it, shall immediately be broken off.” 

“Mistress Alice Pyncheon,” remarked Matthew Maule, 
with the utmost deference, but yet a half-hidden sarcasm 
in his look and tone, “will no doubt feel herself quite safe 
in her father’s presence, and under his all-sufficient pro¬ 
tection.” 

“I certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehension, 
with my father at hand,” said Alice, with maidenly dignity. 
“Neither do I conceive that a lady, while true to herself, can 
have aught to fear from whomsoever, or in any circum¬ 
stances ! ” 

Poor Alice! By what unhappy impulse did she thus put 
herself at once on terms of defiance against a strength which 
she could not estimate? 

“Then, Mistress Alice,” said Matthew Maule, handing a 
chair,—gracefully enough, for a craftsman,—“will it please 
you only to sit down, and do me the favor (though altogether 
beyond a poor carpenter’s deserts) to fix your eyes on mine! ” 

Alice complied. She was very proud. Setting aside all 
advantages of rank, this fair girl deemed herself conscious 
of a power—combined of beauty, high, unsullied purity, 
and the preservative force of womanhood—that could make 
her sphere impenetrable, unless betrayed by treachery 
within. She instinctively knew, it may be, that some sinister 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


211 


or evil potency was now striving to pass her barriers; nor 
would she decline the contest. So Alice put woman’s might 
against man’s might; a match not often equal on the part 
of woman. 

Her father meanwhile had turned away, and seemed ab¬ 
sorbed in the contemplation of a landscape by Claude, where 
a shadowy and sun-streaked vista penetrated so remotely 
into an ancient wood, that it would have been no wonder 
if his fancy had lost itself in the picture’s bewildering depths. 
But, in truth, the picture was no more to him at that mo¬ 
ment than the blank wall against which it hung. His mind 
was haunted with the many and strange tales which he had 
heard, attributing mysterious if not supernatural endow¬ 
ments to these Maules, as well the grandson here present 
as his two immediate ancestors. Mr. Pyncheon’s long resi¬ 
dence abroad, and intercourse with men of wit and fashion, 
—courtiers, worldlings, and free-thinkers,—had done much 
towards obliterating the grim Puritan superstitions, which 
no man of New England birth at that early period could 
entirely escape. But, on the other hand, had not a whole com¬ 
munity believed Maule’s grandfather to be a wizard? Had 
not the crime been proved ? Had not the wizard died for it ? 
Had he not bequeathed a legacy of hatred against the Pyn- 
cheons to this only grandson, who, as it appeared, was now 
about to exercise a subtle influence over the daughter of his 
enemy’s house? Might not this influence be the same that 
was called witchcraft? 

Turning half around, he caught a glimpse of Maule’s figure 
in the looking glass. At some paces from Alice, with his arms 
uplifted in the air, the carpenter made a gesture as if direct¬ 
ing downward a slow, ponderous, and invisible weight upon 
the maiden. 

“Stay, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, stepping for¬ 
ward. “I forbid your proceeding further!” 


212 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

“Pray, my dear father, do not interrupt the young man,” 
said Alice, without changing her position. “His efforts, I 
assure you, will prove very harmless 

Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the Claude. 
It was then his daughter’s will, in opposition to his own, 
that the experiment should be fully tried. Henceforth, 
therefore, he did but consent, not urge it. And was it not 
for her sake far more than for his own that he desired its 
success? That lost parchment once restored, the beautiful 
Alice Pyncheon, with the rich dowry which he could then 
bestow, might wed an English duke or a German reigning- 
prince, instead of some New England clergyman or lawyer! 
At the thought, the ambitious father almost consented, in 
his heart, that, if the devil’s power were needed to the ac¬ 
complishment of this great object, Maule might evoke him. 
Alice’s own purity would be her safeguard. 

With his mind full of imaginary magnificence, Mr. Pyn¬ 
cheon heard a half-uttered exclamation from his daughter. 
It was very faint and low; so indistinct that there seemed 
but half a will to shape out the words, and too undefined 
a purport to be intelligible. Yet it was a call for help!—his 
conscience never doubted it;—and, little more than a whisper 
to his ear, it was a dismal shriek, and long reechoed so, in the 
region round his heart! But this time the father did not turn. 

After a further interval, Maule spoke. 

“Behold your daughter!” said he. 

Mr. Pyncheon came hastily forward. The carpenter was 
standing erect in front of Alice’s chair, and pointing his 
finger towards the maiden with an expression of triumphant 
power the limits of which could not be defined, as, indeed, 
its scope stretched vaguely towards the unseen and the in- 
fipite. Alice sat in an attitude of profound repose, with the 
long brown lashes drooping over her eyes. 

“There she is!” said the carpenter. “Speak to her!” 


ALICE PYNCHEON 213 

“Alice! My daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon. “My 
own Alice! ” 

She did not stir. 

“Louder!” said Maule, smiling. 

“Alice! Awake!” cried her father. “It troubles me to 
see you thus! Awake!” 

He spoke loudly, with terror in his voice, and close to 
that delicate ear which had always been so sensitive to 
every discord. But the sound evidently reached her not: 
It is indescribable what a sense of remote, dim, unattainable 
distance, betwixt himself and Alice, was impressed on the 
father by this impossibility of reaching her with his voice. 

“Best touch her!” said Matthew Maule. “Shake the 
girl, and roughly too! My hands are hardened with too 
much use of axe, saw, and plane,—else I might help you! ” 

Mr. Pyncheon took her hand, and pressed it with the 
earnestness of startled emotion. He kissed her, with so 
great a heart-throb in the kiss, that he thought she must 
needs feel it. Then, in a gust of anger at her insensibility, 
he shook her maiden form with a violence which, the next 
moment, it affrighted him to remember. He withdrew his 
encircling a.rms, and Alice—whose figure, though flexible, 
had been wholly impassive—relapsed into the same attitude 
as before these attempts to arouse her. Maule having shifted 
his position, her face was turned towards him slightly, but 
with what seemed to be a reference of her very slumber 
to his guidance. 

Then it was a strange sight to behold how the man of 
conventionalities shook the powder out of his periwig; how 
the reserved and stately gentleman forgot his dignity; how 
the gold-embroidered waistcoat flickered and glistened in 
the firelight with the convulsion of rage, terror, and sorrow 
in the human heart that was beating under it. 

“Villain!” cried Mr. Pyncheon, shaking his clenched fist 


214 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


at Maule. “You and the fiend together have robbed me of 
my daughter! Give her back, spawn of the old wizard, or 
you shall climb Gallows Hill in your grandfather’s foot¬ 
steps ! ” 

“Softly, Mr. Pyncheon! ” said the carpenter, with scornful 
composure. “Softly, an it please your worship, else you 
will spoil those rich lace ruffles at your wrists! Is it my 
crime if you have sold your daughter for the mere hope of 
getting a sheet of yellow parchment into your clutch ? There 
sits Mistress Alice quietly asleep! Now let Matthew Maule 
try whether she be as proud as the carpenter found her 
awhile since.” 

He spoke, and Alice responded, with a soft, subdued, in¬ 
ward acquiescence, and a bending of her form towards him, 
like the flame of a torch when it indicates a gentle draught 
of air. He beckoned with his hand, and, rising from her chair, 
—blindly, but undoubtingly, as tending to her sure and in¬ 
evitable center,—the proud Alice approached him. He 
waved her back, and, retreating, Alice sank again into her 
seat. 

“She is mine!” said Matthew Maule. “Mine, by the right 
of the strongest spirit!” 

In the further progress of the legend, there is a long, 
grotesque, and occasionally awe-striking account of the car¬ 
penter’s incantations (if so they are to be called), with a 
view of discovering the lost document. It appears to have 
been his object to convert the mind of Alice into a kind of 
telescopic medium, through which Mr. Pyncheon and him¬ 
self might obtain a glimpse into the spiritual world. He 
succeeded, accordingly, in holding an imperfect sort of inter¬ 
course, at one remove, with the departed personages, in whose 
custody the so much valued secret had been carried beyond 
the precincts of earth. During her trance, Alice described 
three figures as being present to her spiritualized perception. 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


215 


One was an aged, dignified, stern-looking gentleman, clad 
as for a solemn festival in grave and costly attire, but with 
a great blood-stain on his richly wrought band; the second, 
an aged man, meanly dressed, with a dark and malign coun¬ 
tenance, and a broken halter about his neck; the third, a 
person not so advanced in life as the former two, but beyond 
the middle age, wearing a coarse woolen tunic and leather 
breeches, and with a carpenter’s rule sticking out of his 
side pocket. These three visionary characters possessed a 
mutual knowledge of the missing document. One of them, 
in truth—it was he with the blood-stain on his band,— 
seemed, unless his gestures were misunderstood, to hold the 
parchment in his immediate keeping, but was prevented, 
by his two partners in the mystery, from disburdening him¬ 
self of the trust. Finally, when he showed a purpose of 
shouting forth the secret, loudly enough to be heard from 
his own sphere into that of mortals, his companions strug¬ 
gled with him, and pressed their hands over his mouth; 
and forthwith—whether that he were choked by it, or that 
the secret itself was of a crimson hue—there was a fresh 
flow of blood upon his band. Upon this, the two meanly 
dressed figures mocked and jeered at the much-abashed old 
dignitary, and pointed their fingers at the stain. 

At this juncture, Maule turned to Mr. Pyncheon. 

“It will never be allowed,” said he. “The custody of this 
secret, that would so enrich his heirs, makes part of your 
grandfather’s retribution. He must choke with it until it 
is no longer of any value. And keep you the House of the 
Seven Gables! It is too dear bought an inheritance, and 
too heavy with the curse upon it, to be shifted yet awhile 
from the Colonel’s posterity!” 

Mr. Pyncheon tried to speak, but—what with fear and 
passion—could make only a gurgling murmur in his throat. 
The carpenter smiled. 


216 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

“Aha, worshipful sir!—so, you have old Maule’s blood 
to drink!” said he, jeeringly. 

“Fiend in man’s shape! why dost thou keep dominion 
over my child?” cried Mr. Pyncheon, when his choked utter¬ 
ance could make way. “Give me back my daughter! Then 
go thy ways; and may we never meet again! ” 

“Your daughter!” said Matthew Maule. “Why, she is 
fairly mine! Nevertheless, not to be too hard with fair 
Mistress Alice, I will leave her in your keeping; but I do 
not warrant you that she shall never have occasion to re¬ 
member Maule, the carpenter.” 

He waved his hands with an upward motion; and after 
a few repetitions of similar gestures, the beautiful Alice Pyn¬ 
cheon awoke from her strange trance. She awoke, without 
the slightest recollection of her visionary experience; but 
as one losing herself in a momentary reverie, and returning 
to the consciousness of actual life, in almost as brief an in¬ 
terval as the down-sinking flame of the hearth should quiver 
again up the chimney. On recognizing Matthew Maule, 
she assumed an air of somewhat cold but gentle dignity, the 
rather, as there was a certain peculiar smile on the car¬ 
penter’s visage that stirred the native pride of the fair 
Alice. So ended, for that time, the quest for the lost title- 
deed of the Pyncheon territory at the Eastward; nor, though 
often subsequently renewed, has it ever yet befallen a Pyn¬ 
cheon to set his eye upon that parchment. 

But, alas for the beautiful, the gentle, yet too haughty 
Ahce! A power that she little dreamed of had laid its grasp 
upon her maiden soul. A will, most unlike her own, con¬ 
strained her to do its grotesque and fantastic bidding. Her 
father, as it proved, had martyred his poor child to an in¬ 
ordinate desire for measuring his land by miles instead of 
acres. And, therefore, while Alice Pyncheon lived, she was 
Maule’s slave, in a bondage more humiliating, a thousand^- 


ALICE PYNCHEON 


217 


fold, than that which binds its chain around the body. Seated 
by his humble fireside, Maule had but to wave his hand; 
and, wherever the proud lady chanced to be,—whether in 
her chamber, or entertaining her father’s stately guests, or 
worshiping at church,—whatever her place or occupation, 
her spirit passed from beneath her own control, and bowed 
itself to Maule. “Alice, laugh!”—the carpenter, beside his 
hearth, would say; or perhaps intensely will it, wnthout a 
spoken word. And, even were it prayer-time, or at a funeral, 
Alice must break into wild laughter. “Alice, be sad! ”—and, 
at the instant, down would come her tears, quenching all 
the mirth of those around her like sudden rain upon a bon¬ 
fire. “Alice, dance!”—and dance she would, not in such 
court-like measure as she had learned abroad, but some 
high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the brisk 
lassies at a rustic merry-making. It seemed to be Maule’s 
impulse, not to ruin Alice, nor to visit her with any black or 
gigantic mischief, which would have crowned her sorrows 
with the grace of tragedy, but to wreak a low, ungenerous 
scorn upon her. Thus all the dignity of life was lost. She 
felt herself too much abased, and longed to change natures 
with some worm! 

One evening, at a bridal-party (but not her own; for, so 
lost from self-control, she would have deemed it sin to 
marry), poor Alice was beckoned forth by her unseen despot, 
and constrained, in her gossamer white dress and satin slip¬ 
pers, to hasten along the street to the mean dwelling of a 
laboring-man. There was laughter and good cheer within; 
for Matthew Maule, that night, was to wed the laborer’s 
daughter, and had summoned proud Alice Pyncheon to wait 
upon his bride. And so she did; and when the twain were 
one, Alice awoke out of her enchanted sleep. Yet, no longer 
proud,—humbly, and with a smile all steeped in sadness,— 
she kissed Maule’s wife, and went her way. It was an in- 


218 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


clement night; the southeast wind drove the mingled snow 
and rain into her thinly sheltered bosom; her satin slippers 
were wet through and through, as she trod the muddy side¬ 
walks. The next day a cold; soon, a settled cough; anon, 
a hectic cheek, a wasted form, that sat beside the harpsichord, 
and filled the house with music! Music, in which a strain 
of the heavenly choristers was echoed! Oh, joy! For Alice 
had borne her last humiliation! Oh, greater joy! For Alice 
was penitent of her one earthly sin, and proud no more! 

The Pyncheons made a great funeral for Alice. The kith 
and kin were there, and the whole respectability of the town 
besides. But, last in the procession, came Matthew Maule, 
gnashing his teeth, as if he would have bitten his own heart 
in twain,—the darkest and wofullest man that ever walked 
behind a corpse! He meant to humble Alice, not to kill 
her; but he had taken a woman’s delicate soul into his rude 
gripe, to play with—and she was dead! 


XIV 


phcebe’s good-by 

Holgrave, plunging into this tale with the energy and 
absorption natural to a young author, had given a good deal 
of action to the parts capable of being developed and exempli¬ 
fied in that manner. He now observed that a certain re¬ 
markable drowsiness (wholly unlike that with which the 
reader possibly feels himself affected) had been flung over 
the senses of his auditress. It was the effect, unquestionably, 
of the mystic gesticulations by which he had sought to bring 
bodily before Phoebe’s perception the figure of the mesmeriz¬ 
ing carpenter. With the lids drooping over her eyes,—now 
lifted for an instant, and drawn down again as with leaden 
weights,—she leaned slightly towards him, and seemed almost 
to regulate her breath by his. Holgrave gazed at her, as he 
rolled up his manuscript, and recognized an incipient stage 
of that curious psychological condition, which, as he had him- 
seld told Phoebe, he possessed more than an ordinary faculty 
of producing. A veil was beginning to be muffled about her, 
in which she could behold only him, and live only in his 
thoughts and emotions. His glance, as he fastened it on the 
young girl, grew involuntarily more concentrated; in his 
attitude there was the consciousness of power, investing his 
hardly mature figure with a dignity that did not belong to 
its physical manifestation. It was evident, that, with but 
one wave of his hand and a corresponding effort of his will, 
he could complete his mastery over Phoebe’s yet free and 

219 


220 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


virgin spirit: he could establish an influence over this good, 
pure, and simple child, as dangerous, and perhaps as disas¬ 
trous, as that which the carpenter of his legend had acquired 
and exercised over the ill-fated Alice. 

To a disposition like Holgrave’s, at once speculative and 
active, there is no temptation so great as the opportunity of 
acquiring empire over the human spirit; nor any idea more 
seductive to a young man than to become the arbiter of a 
young girl’s destiny. Let us, therefore,—whatever his de¬ 
fects of nature and education, and in spite of his scorn for 
creeds and institutions,—concede to the daguerreotypist the 
rare and high quality of reverence for another’s individuality. 
Let us allow him integrity, also, forever after to be con¬ 
fided in; since he forbade himself to twine that one link 
more which might have rendered his spell over Phoebe in¬ 
dissoluble. 

He made a slight gesture upward with his hand. 

“You really mortify me, my dear Miss Phoebe!” he ex¬ 
claimed, smiling half-sarcastically at her. “My poor story, 
it is but too evident, will never do for Godey or Graham! 
Only think of your falling asleep at what I hoped the news¬ 
paper critics would pronounce a most brilliant, powerful, 
imaginative, pathetic, and original winding up! Well, the 
manuscript must serve to light lamps with;—if, indeed, 
being so imbued with my gentle dulness, it is any longer 
capable of flame!” 

“Me asleep! How can you say so?” answered Phoebe, 
as unconscious of the crisis through which she had passed 
as an infant of the precipice to the verge of which it has 
rolled. “No, no! I consider myself as having been very 
attentive; and, though I don’t remember the incidents quite 
distinctly, yet I have an impression of a vast deal of trouble 
and calamity,—so, no doubt, the story will prove exceed¬ 
ingly attractive.” 


PHCEBE’S GOOD-BY 


221 


By this time the sun had gone down, and was tinting the 
clouds towards the zenith with those bright hues which are 
not seen there until some time after sunset, and when the 
horizon has quite lost its richer brilliancy. The moon, too, 
which had long been climbing overhead, and unobstrusively 
melting its disk into the azure,—like an ambitious demagogue, 
who hides his aspiring purpose by assuming the prevalent 
hue of popular sentiment,—now began to shine out, broad 
and oval, in its middle pathway. These silvery beams were 
already powerful enough to change the character of the 
lingering daylight. They softened and embellished the aspect 
of the old house; although the shadows fell deeper into the 
angles of its many gables, and lay brooding under the pro¬ 
jecting story, and within the half-open door. With the 
lapse of every moment, the garden grew more picturesque; 
the fruit-trees, shrubbery, and flower-bushes had a dark 
obscurity among them. The commonplace characteristics— 
which, at noon-tide, it seemed to have taken a century of 
sordid life to accumulate—were now transfigured by a charm 
of romance. A hundred mysterious years were whispering 
among the leaves, whenever the slight sea-breeze found its 
way thither and stirred them. Through the foliage that 
roofed the little summer-house the moonlight flickered to 
and fro, and fell silvery white on the dark floor, the table, 
and the circular bench, with a continual shift and play, ac¬ 
cording as the chinks and wayward crevices among the twigs 
admitted or shut out the glimmer. 

So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the feverish 
day, that the summer eve might be fancied as sprinkling 
dews and liquid moonlight, with a dash of icy temper in 
them, out of a silver vase. Here and there, a few drops of 
this freshness were scattered on a human heart, and gave it 
youth again, and sympathy with the eternal youth of 
nature. The artist chanced to be one on whom the reviving 


222 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


influence fell. It made him feel—what he sometimes almost 
forgot, thrust so early as he had been into the rude struggle 
of man with man—how youthful he still was. 

“It seems to me,” he observed, “that I never watched the 
coming of so beautiful an eve, and never felt anything so 
very much like happiness as at this moment. After all, 
what a good world we live in! How good, and beautiful! 
How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten or age-worn 
in it! This old house, for example, which sometimes has 
positively oppressed my breath with its smell of decaying 
timber! And this garden, where the black mould always 
clings to my spade, as if I were a sexton delving in a grave¬ 
yard! Could I keep the feeling that now possesses me, the 
garden would every day be virgin soil, with the earth’s 
first freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes; and 
the house!—it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming 
with the earliest roses that God ever made. Moonlight, 
and the sentiment in man’s heart responsive to it, are the 
greatest of renovators and reformers. And all other reform 
and renovation, I suppose, will prove to be no better than 
moonshine! ” 

“I have been happier than I am now; at least, much 
gayer,” said Phoebe, thoughtfully. “Yet I am sensible of 
a great charm in this brightening moonlight; and I love to 
watch how the day, tired as it is, lags away reluctantly, 
and hates to be called yesterday so soon. I never cared 
much about moonlight before. What is there, I wonder, 
so beautiful in it, to-night?” 

“And you have never felt it before?” inquired the artist, 
looking earnestly at the girl through the twilight. 

“Never,” answered Phoebe; “and life does not look the 
same, now that I have felt it so. It seems as if I had looked 
at everything, hitherto, in broad daylight, or else in the 
ruddy light of a cheerful fire, glimmering and dancing 


PHCEBE’S GOOD-BY 


223 


through a room. Ah, poor me!” she added, with a half¬ 
melancholy laugh. “I shall never be so merry as before I 
knew Cousin Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford. I have 
grown a great deal older, in this little time. Older, and, I 
hope, wiser, and,—not exactly sadder,—but, certainly, with 
not half so much lightness in my spirits! I have given them 
my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of course, 
I cannot both give and keep it. They are welcome, not¬ 
withstanding ! ” 

“You have lost nothing, Phoebe, worth keeping, nor which 
it was possible to keep,” said Holgrave, after a pause. “Our 
first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it 
until after it is gone. But sometimes—always, I suspect, 
unless one is exceedingly unfortunate—there comes a sense 
of second youth, gushing out of the heart’s joy at being in 
love; or, possibly, it may come to crown some other grand 
festival in life, if any other such there be. This bemoaning of 
one’s self (as you do now) over the first, careless, shallow 
gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness at 
youth regained,—so much deeper and richer than that we 
lost,—are essential to the soul’s development. In some cases, 
the two states come almost simultaneously, and mingle the 
sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion.” 

“I hardly think I understand you,” said Phoebe. 

“No wonder,” replied Holgrave, smiling; “for I have told 
you a secret which I hardly began to know before I found 
myself giving it utterance. Remember it, however; and 
when the truth becomes clear to you, then think of this 
moonlight scene!” 

“It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush 
of faint crimson, upward from the west, between those 
buildings,” remarked Phoebe. “I must go in. Cousin Hep¬ 
zibah is not quick at figures, and will give herself a headache 
over the day’s accounts, unless I help her.” 


224 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


But Holgrave detained her a little longer. 

“Miss Hepzibah tells me,” observed he, “that you return 
to the country in a few days.” 

“Yes, but only for a little while,” answered Phoebe; “for 
I look upon this as my present home. I go to make a few 
arrangements, and to take a more deliberate leave of my 
mother and friends. It is pleasant to live where one is much 
desired and very useful; and I think I may have the satis¬ 
faction of feeling myself so here.” 

“You surely may, and more than you imagine,” said the 
artist. “Whatever health, comfort, and natural life exists 
in the house, is embodied in your person. These blessings 
came along with you, and will vanish when you leave the 
threshold. Miss Hepzibah, by secluding herself from society, 
has lost all true relation with it, and is, in fact, dead; although 
she galvanizes herself into a semblance of life, and stands 
behind her counter, afflicting the world with a greatly-to-be- 
deprecated scowl. Your poor cousin Clifford is another dead 
and long-buried person, on whom the governor and council 
have wrought a necromantic miracle. I should not wonder 
if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, 
and nothing to be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. 
Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little, flexibility 
she has. They both exist by you.” 

“I should be very sorry to think so,” answered Phoebe, 
gravely. “But it is true that my small abilities were pre¬ 
cisely what they needed; and I have a real interest in their 
welfare,—an odd kind of motherly sentiment,—which I wish 
you would not laugh at! And let me tell you frankly, Mr. 
Holgrave, I am sometimes puzzled to know whether you 
wish them well or ill.” 

“Undoubtedly,” said the daguerreotypist, “I do feel an 
interest in this antiquated, poverty-stricken old maiden lady, 
and this degraded and shattered gentleman,—this abortive 


PHCEBE’S GOOD-BY 


225 


lover of the beautiful. A kindly interest, too, helpless old 
children that they are! But you have no conception what 
a different kind of heart mine is from your own. It is not 
my impulse, as regards these two individuals, either to help 
or hinder; but to look on, to analyze, to explain matters to 
myself, and to comprehend the drama which, for almost 
two hundred years, has been dragging its slow length over 
the ground where you and I now tread. If permitted to wit¬ 
ness the close, I doubt not to derive a moral satisfaction 
from it, go matters how they may. There is a conviction 
within me that the end draws nigh. But, though Providence 
sent you hither to help, and sends me only as a privileged 
and meet spectator, I pledge myself to lend these unfortunate 
beings whatever aid I can!” 

“I wish you would speak more plainly,” cried Phoebe, 
perplexed and displeased; “and, above all, that you would 
feel more like a Christian and a human being! How is it 
possible to see people in distress, without desiring, more than 
anything else, to help and comfort them? You talk as if 
this old house were a theater; and you seem to look at Hep- 
zibah’s and Clifford’s misfortunes, and those of generations 
before them, as a tragedy, such as I have seen acted in the 
hall of a country hotel, only the present one appears to be 
played exclusively for your amusement. I do not like this. 
.The play costs the performers too much, and the audience is 
too cold-hearted.” 

“You are severe,” said Holgrave, compelled to recognize 
a degree of truth in this piquant sketch of his own mood. 

“And then,” continued Phoebe, “what can you mean by 
your conviction, which you tell me of, that the end is draw¬ 
ing near? Do you know of any new trouble hanging over 
my poor relatives? If so, tell me at once, and I wdll not 
leave them!” 

“Forgive me, Phoebe!” said the daguerreotypist, holding 


226 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


out his hand, to which the girl was constrained to yield her 
own. “I am somewhat of a mystic, it must be confessed. 
The tendency is in my blood, together with the faculty of 
mesmerism, which might have brought me to Gallows Hill, 
in the good old times of witchcraft. Believe me, if I were 
really aware of any secret, the disclosure of which would 
benefit your friends,—who are my own friends, likewise,— 
you should learn it before we part. But I have no such 
knowledge.” 

“You hold something back!” said Phoebe. 

“Nothing,—no secrets but my own,” answered Holgrave. 
“I can perceive, indeed, that Judge Pyncheon still keeps his 
eye on Clifford, in whose ruin he had so large a share. His 
motives and intentions, however, are a mystery to me. He 
is a determined and relentless man, with the genuine charac¬ 
ter of an inquisitor; and had he any object to gain by putting 
Clifford to the rack, I verily believe that he would wrench 
his joints from their sockets, in order to accomplish it. But, 
so wealthy and eminent as he is,—so powerful in his own 
strength, and in the support of society on all sides,—what 
can Judge Pyncheon have to hope or fear from the imbecile, 
branded, half-torpid Clifford?” 

“Yet,” urged Phoebe, “you did speak as if misfortune were 
impending! ” 

“Oh, that was because I am morbid!” replied the artist. 
“My mind has a twist aside, like almost everybody’s mind, 
except your own. Moreover, it is so strange to find myself 
an inmate of this old Pyncheon House, and sitting in this 
old garden—(hark, how Maule’s well is murmuring!)—that, 
were it only for this one circumstance, I cannot help fancying 
that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catastrophe.” 

“There! ” cried Phoebe with renewed vexation; for she was 
by nature as hostile to mystery as the sunshine to a dark 
corner. “You puzzle me more than ever!” 


PHOEBE’S GOOD-BY 


227 


“Then let us part friends!” said Holgrave, pressing her 
hand. “Or, if not friends, let us part before you entirely hate 
me. You, who love everybody else in the world!” 

“Good-by, then,” said Phoebe, frankly. “I do not mean 
to be angry a great while, and should be sorry to have you 
think so. There has Cousin Hepzibah been standing in the 
shadow of the doorway, this quarter of an hour past! She 
thinks I stay too long in the damp garden. So, good-night, 
and good-by!” 

On the second morning thereafter, Phoebe might have 
been seen, in her straw bonnet, with a shawl on one arm and 
a little carpet-bag on the other, bidding adieu to Hepzibah 
and Cousin Clifford. She was to take a seat in the next train 
of cars, which would transport her to within half a dozen 
miles of her country village. 

The tears were in Phoebe’s eyes; a smile, dewy with affec¬ 
tionate regret, was glimmering around her pleasant mouth. 
She wondered how it came to pass, that her life of a few 
weeks, here in this heavy-hearted old mansion, had taken 
such hold of her, and so melted into her associations, as now 
to seem a more important center-point of remembrance than 
all which had gone before. How had Hepzibah—grim, silent, 
and irresponsive to her overflow of cordial sentiment—con¬ 
trived to win so much love? And Clifford,—in his abortive 
decay, with the mystery of fearful crime upon him, and the 
close prison-atmosphere yet lurking in his breath,—how had 
he transformed himself into the simplest child, whom Phoebe 
felt bound to watch over, and be, as it were, the providence 
of his unconsidered hours! Everything, at that instant of 
farewell, stood out prominently to her view. Look where 
she would, lay her hand on what she might, the object re¬ 
sponded to her consciousness, as if a moist human heart 
were in it. 

She peeped from the window into the garden, and felt 


228 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

herself more regretful at leaving this spot of black earth, 
vitiated with such an age-long growth of weeds, than joyful 
at the idea of again scenting her pine forests and fresh clover- 
fields. She called Chanticleer, his two wives, and the vener¬ 
able chicken, and threw them some crumbs of bread from 
the breakfast-table. These being hastily gobbled up, the 
chicken spread its wings, and lighted close by Phoebe on 
the window-sill, where it looked gravely into her face and 
vented its emotions in a croak. Phoebe bade it be a good 
old chicken during her absence, and promised to bring it 
a little bag of buckwheat. 

“Ah, Phoebe!” remarked Hepzibah, “you do not smile so 
naturally as when you came to us! Then, the smile chose 
to shine out; now, you choose it should. It is well that you 
are going back, for a little while, into your native air. There 
has been too much weight on your spirits. The house is too 
gloomy and lonesome; the shop is full of vexations; and as 
for me, I have no faculty of making things look brighter 
than they are. Dear Clifford has been your only comfort!” 

“Come hither, Phoebe,” suddenly cried her cousin Clifford, 
who had said very little all the morning. “Close!—closer!— 
and look me in the face!” 

Phoebe put one of her small hands on each elbow of his 
chair, and leaned her face towards him, so that he might 
peruse it as carefully as he would. It is probable that the 
latent emotions of this parting hour had revived, in some 
degree, his bedimmed and enfeebled faculties. At any rate, 
Phoebe soon felt that, if not the profound insight of a seer, 
yet a more than feminine delicacy of appreciation, was 
making her heart the subject of its regard. A moment be¬ 
fore, she had known nothing which she would have sought 
to hide. Now, as if some secret were hinted to her own 
consciousness through the medium of another’s perception, 
she was fain to let her eyelids droop beneath Clifford’s gaze. 


PHCEBE’S GOOD-BY 


229 


A blush, too,—the redder, because she strove hard to keep 
it down,—ascended higher and higher, in a tide of fitful 
progress, until even her brow was all suffused with it. 

“It is enough, Phoebe,” said Clifford, with a melancholy 
smile. “When I first saw you, you were the prettiest little 
maiden in the world; and now you have deepened into 
beauty! Girlhood has passed into womanhood; the bud 
is a bloom! Go, now!—I feel lonelier than I did.” 

Phoebe took leave of the desolate couple, and passed 
through the shop, twinkling her eyelids to shake off a dew- 
drop ; for—considering how brief her absence was to be, and 
therefore the folly of being cast down about it—she would 
not so far acknowledge her tears as to dry them with her 
handkerchief. On the doorstep, she met the little urchin 
whose marvelous feats of gastronomy have been recorded 
in the earlier pages of our narrative. She took from the 
window some specimen or other of natural history,—her 
eyes being too dim with moisture to inform her accurately 
whether it was a rabbit or a hippopotamus,—put it into the 
child’s hand, as a parting gift, and went her way. Old Uncle 
Venner was just coming out of his door, with a wood-horse 
and saw on his shoulder; and, trudging along the street, he 
scrupled not to keep company with Phoebe, so far as their 
paths lay together; nor, in spite of his patched coat and 
rusty beaver, and the curious fashion of his tow-cloth trousers, 
could she find it in her heart to outwalk him. 

A We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon,” observed 
the street philosopher. “It is unaccountable how little while 
it takes some folks to grow just as natural to a man as his 
own breath; and, begging your pardon, Miss Phoebe 
(though there can be no offence in an old man’s saying it), 
that’s just what you’ve grown to me! My years have been 
a great many, and your life is but just beginning; and yet, 
you are somehow as familiar to me as if I had found you 


230 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


at my mother’s door, and you had blossomed, like a running 
vine, all along my pathway since. Come back soon, or' I 
shall be gone to my farm; for I begin to find these wood¬ 
sawing jobs a little too tough for my back-ache.” 

“Very soon, Uncle Venner,” replied Phoebe. 

“And let it be all the sooner, Phoebe, for the sake of those 
poor souls yonder,” continued her companion. “They can 
never do without you, now,—never, Phoebe, never!—no more 
than if one of God’s angels had been living with them, and 
making their dismal house pleasant and comfortable! Don’t 
it seem to you they’d be in a sad case, if, some pleasant sum¬ 
mer morning like this, the angel should spread his wings, 
and fly to the place he came from? Well, just so they feel, 
now that you’re going home by the railroad! They can’t 
bear it, Miss Phoebe; so be sure to come back!” 

“I am no angel, Uncle Venner,” said Phoebe, smiling, as 
she offered him her hand at the street-corner. “But, I sup¬ 
pose, people never feel so much like angels as when they 
are doing what little good they may. So I shall certainly 
come back!” 

Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and Phoebe 
took the wings of the morning, and was soon flitting almost 
as rapidly away as if endowed with the aerial locomotion 
of the angels to whom Uncle Venner had so graciously com¬ 
pared her. 


XV 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 

Several days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and 
drearily enough. In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom 
of sky and earth to the one inauspicious circumstance of 
Phoebe’s departure), an easterly storm had set in, and in- 
defatigably applied itself to the task of making the black 
roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever 
before. Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the 
interior. Poor Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his 
scanty resources of enjoyment. Phoebe was not there; nor 
did the sunshine fall upon the floor. The garden, with its 
muddy walks, and the chill, dripping foliage of its summer¬ 
house, was an image to be shuddered at. Nothing flourished 
in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the 
brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the 
joints of the shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that 
had lately been suffering from drought, in the angle between 
the two front gables. 

As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with 
the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only another 
phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the east 
wind itself, grim and disconsolate, in a rusty black silk 
gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head. 
The custom of the shop fell off, because a story got abroad 
that she soured her small beer and other damageable 
commodities, by scowling on them. It is, perhaps, true 

231 


232 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


that the'public had something reasonably to complain of 
in her deportment; but towards Clifford she was neither 
ill-tempered nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than 
always, had it been possible to make it reach him. The 
inutility of her best efforts, however, palsied the poor old 
gentlewoman. She could do little else than sit silently in a 
corner of the room, when the wet pear-tree branches, sweep¬ 
ing across the small windows, created a noon-day dusk, which 
Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with her woe-begone 
aspect. It was no fault of Hepzibah’s. Everything—even 
the old chairs and tables, that had known what weather was 
for three or four such life-times as her own—looked as damp 
and chill as if the present were their worst experience. The 
picture of the Puritan Colonel shivered on the wall. The 
house itself shivered, from every attic of its seven gables, 
down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all the 
better as an emblem of the mansion’s heart, because, though 
built for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty. 

Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the 
parlor. But the storm-demon kept watch above, and, when¬ 
ever a flame was kindled, drove the smoke back again, chok¬ 
ing the chimney’s sooty throat with its own breath. Never¬ 
theless, during four days of this miserable storm, Clifford 
wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary 
chair. On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to 
breakfast, he responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, 
expressive of a determination not to leave his bed. His 
sister made no attempt to change his purpose. In fact, 
entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could hardly have 
borne any longer the wretched duty—so impracticable by her 
few and rigid faculties—of seeking pastime for a still sensi¬ 
tive, but ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force 
or volition. It was, at least, something short of positive 
despair, that, to-day, she might sit shivering alone, and not 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


233 


suffer continually a new grief, and unreasonable pang of 
remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow-sufferer. 

But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appear¬ 
ance below stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest 
of amusement. In the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah 
heard a note of music, which (there being no other tuneful 
contrivance in the House of the Seven Gables) she knew 
must proceed from Alice Pyncheon’s harpsichord. She was 
aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated 
taste for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its 
practice. It was difficult, however, to conceive of his re¬ 
taining an accomplishment to which daily exercise is so 
essential, in the measure indicated by the sweet, airy, and 
delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now stole upon 
her ear. Nor was it less marvelous that the long-silent instru¬ 
ment should be capable of so much melody. Hepzibah in¬ 
voluntarily thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of 
death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary 
Alice. But it was, perhaps, proof of the agency of other 
than spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords 
seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations, and the 
music ceased. 

But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; 
nor was the easterly day fated to pass without an event 
sufficient in itself to poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the 
balmiest air that ever brought the humming-birds along 
with it. The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon’s performance 
(or Clifford’s, if his we must consider it) were driven away by 
no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell. 
A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence 
somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor. Hepzibah 
delayed a moment, while muffling herself in a faded shawl, 
which had been her defensive armor in a forty years’ war¬ 
fare again the east wind. A characteristic sound, however,— 


234 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and re¬ 
verberating spasm in somebody’s capacious depth of chest, 
—impelled her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce 
faintheartedness so common to women in cases of perilous 
emergency. Few of her sex, on such occasions, have ever 
looked so terrible as our poor scowling Hepzibah. But the 
visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him, stood up 
his umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage of 
composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which his 
appearance had excited. 

Hepzibah’s presentiment had not deceived her. It was 
no other than Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying 
the front door, had now effected his entrance into the shop. 

“How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?—and how does this 
most inclement weather affect our poor Clifford?” began 
the Judge; and wonderful it seemed, indeed, that the east¬ 
erly storm was not put to shame, or, at any rate, a little 
mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile. “I could 
not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can 
in any manner promote his comfort, or your own.” 

“You can do nothing,” said Hepzibah, controlling her 
agitation as well as she could. “I devote myself to Clifford. 
He has every comfort which his situation admits of.” 

“But allow me to suggest, dear cousin,” rejoined the Judge, 
“you err,—in all affection and kindness, no doubt, and with 
the very best intentions,—but you do err, nevertheless, in 
keeping your brother so secluded. Why insulate him thus 
from all sympathy and kindness? Clifford, alas! has had 
too much of solitude. Now let him try society,—the society, 
that is to say, of kindred and old friends. Let me, for in¬ 
stance, but see Clifford, and I will answer for the good 
effect of the interview.” 

“You cannot see him,” answered Hepzibah. “Clifford has 
kept his bed since yesterday.” 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


235 


“What! How! Is he ill?” exclaimed Judge Pyncheon, 
starting with what seemed to be angry alarm; for the very 
frown of the old Puritan darkened through the room as he 
spoke. “Nay, then, I must and will see him! What if he 
should die?” 

“He is in no danger of death,” said Hepzibah,—and added, 
with bitterness that she could repress no longer, “none; 
unless he shall be persecuted to death, now, by the same 
man who long ago attempted it!” 

“Cousin Hepzibah,” said the Judge, with an impressive 
earnestness of manner, which grew even to tearful pathos as 
he proceeded, “is it possible that you do not perceive how 
unjust, how unkind, how unchristian, is this constant, this 
long-continued bitterness against me, for a part which I was 
constrained by duty and conscience, by the force of law, and 
at my own peril, to act? What did I do, in detriment to 
Clifford, which it was possible to leave undone ? How could 
you, his sister,—if, for your never-ending sorrow, as it has 
been for mine, you had known what I did,—have shown 
greater tenderness? And do you think, cousin, that it has 
cost me no pang?—that it has left no anguish in my bosom, 
from that day to this, amidst all the prosperity with which 
Heaven has blessed me?—or that I do not now rejoice, when 
it is deemed consistent with the dues of public justice and 
the welfare of society that this dear kinsman, this early 
friend, this nature so delicately and beautifully constituted,— 
so unfortunate, let us pronounce him, and forbear to say, so 
guilty,—that our own Clifford, in fine, should be given back 
to life, and its possibilities of enjoyment? Ah, you little 
know me, Cousin Hepzibah! You little know this heart! 
It now throbs at the thought of meeting him! There lives 
not the human being (except yourself,—and you not more 
than I) who has shed so many tears for Clifford’s calamity! 
You behold some of them now. There is none who would 


236 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


so delight to promote his happiness! Try me, Hepzibah! 
—try me, cousin!—try the man whom you have treated as 
your enemy and Clifford’s—try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you 
shall find him true, to the heart’s core!” 

“In the name of Heaven,” cried Hepzibah, provoked only 
to intenser indignation by this outgush of the inestimable 
tenderness of a stern nature,—“in God’s name, whom you 
insult, and whose power I could almost question, since he 
hears you utter so many false words without palsying your 
tongue,—give over, I beseech you, this loathsome pretence 
of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like 
a man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose 
against him in your heart! Speak it out, at once!—or, if 
you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you can triumph 
in its success! But never speak again of your love for my 
poor brother! I cannot bear it! It wall drive me beyond a 
woman’s decency! It will drive me mad! Forbear! Not 
another word! It will make me spurn you! ” 

For once, Hepzibah’s wrath had given her courage. She 
had spoken. But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust 
of Judge Pyncheon’s integrity, and this utter denial, appar¬ 
ently, of his claim to stand in the ring of human sympathies, 
—were they founded in any just perception of his character, 
or merely the offspring of a woman’s unreasonable prejudice, 
deduced from nothing? 

The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent 
respectability. The church acknowledged it; the state 
acknowledged it. It was denied by nobody. In all the very 
extensive sphere of those who knew him, whether in his 
public-or private capacities, there was not an individual— 
except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like the daguerre- 
otypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents—who 
would have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a 
high and honorable place in the world’s regard. Nor (we 



THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


237 


must do him the further justice to say) did Judge Pyncheon 
himself, probably, entertain many or very frequent doubts, 
that his enviable reputation accorded with his deserts. His 
conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest witness 
to a man’s integrity,—his conscience, unless it might be for 
the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, 
now and then, some black day in the whole year’s circle,— 
his conscience bore an accordant testimony with the world’s 
laudatory voice. And yet, strong as this evidence may seem 
to be, we should hesitate to peril our own conscience on the 
assertion, that the Judge and the consenting world were 
right, and that poor Hepzibah, with her solitary prejudice, 
was wrong. Hidden from mankind,—forgotten by himself, 
or buried so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile 
of ostentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note 
of it,—there may have lurked some evil and unsightly thing. 
Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, that a daily 
guilt might have been acted by him, continually renewed, 
and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain 
of a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment 
being aware of it. 

Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard 
texture of the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into 
mistakes of this kind. They are ordinarily men to whom 
forms are of paramount importance. Their field of action 
lies among the external phenomena of life. They possess 
vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and appropriating 
to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, 
landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public 
honors. With these materials, and with deeds of goodly 
aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of this class 
builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in 
the view of other people, and ultimately in his own view, is 
no other than the man’s character, or the man himself. 


238 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Behold, therefore, a palace! Its splendid halls, and suites 
of spacious apartments, are floored with the mosaic-work of 
costly marbles; its windows, the whole height of each room, 
admit the sunshine through the most transparent of plate- 
glass ; its high cornices are gilded, and its ceilings gorgeously 
painted; and a lofty dome—through which, from the central 
pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no obstructing 
medium between—surmounts the whole. With what fairer 
and nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth 
his character? Ah! but in some low and obscure nook,— 
some narrow closet on the ground-floor, shut, locked and 
bolted, and the key flung away,—or beneath the marble 
pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the richest 
pattern of mosaic-work above,—may lie a corpse, half de¬ 
cayed, and still decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all 
through the palace! The inhabitant will not be conscious 
of it, for it has long been his daily breath! Neither will 
the visitors, for they smell only the rich odors which the 
master sedulously scatters through the palace, and the in¬ 
cense which they bring, and delight to burn before him! 
Now and then, perchance, comes in a seer, before whose 
sadly gifted eye the whole structure melts into thin air, 
leaving only the hidden nook, the bolted closet, with the 
cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door, or the deadly hole 
under the pavement, and the decaying corpse within. Here, 
then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man’s character, 
and of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to 
his life. And, beneath the show of a marble palace, that 
pool of stagnant water, foul with many impurities, and, 
perhaps, tinged with blood,—that secret abomination, above 
which, possibly, he may say his prayers, without remember¬ 
ing it,—is this man’s miserable soul! 

To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to 
Judge Pyncheon. We might say (without in the least im- 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


239 


puting crime to a personage of his eminent respectability) 
that there was enough of splendid rubbish in his life to 
cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience 
than the Judge was ever troubled with. The purity of his 
judicial character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of 
his public service in subsequent capacities; his devotedness 
to his party, and the rigid consistency with which he had 
adhered to its principles, or, at all events, kept pace with 
its organized movements; his remarkable zeal as president 
of a Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer 
of a widow’s and orphan’s fund; his benefits to horticulture, 
by producing two much-esteemed varieties of the pear, and 
to agriculture, through the agency of the famous Pyncheon 
bull; the cleanliness of his moral deportment, for a great 
many years past; the severity with which he had frowned 
upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated son, 
delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour 
of the young man’s life; his prayers at morning and even¬ 
tide, and graces at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of 
the temperance cause; his confining himself, since the last 
attack of the gout, to five diurnal glasses of the old sherry 
wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the polish of his 
boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the square 
and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material, 
and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equip¬ 
ment; the scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, 
in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a 
motion of the hand, to all and sundry of his acquaintances, 
rich or poor; the smile of broad benevolence wherewith he 
made it a point to gladden the whole world,—what room 
could possibly be found for darker traits in a portrait made 
up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what 
he beheld in the looking-glass. This admirably arranged 
life was what he was conscious of in the progress of every 


240 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


day. Then, might not he claim to be its result and sum, 
and say to himself and the community, “Behold Judge 
Pyncheon there”? 

And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early 
and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong act,— 
or that, even now, the inevitable force of circumstances 
should occasionally make him do one questionable deed 
among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless ones, 
—would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary 
deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the 
fair aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in 
evil, that a thumb’s bigness of it should outweigh the mass 
of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale! 
This scale and balance system is a favorite one w r ith people 
of Judge Pyncheon’s brotherhood. A hard, cold man, thus 
unfortunately situated, seldom or never looking inward, and 
resolutely taking his idea of himself from what purports to 
be his image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, 
can scarcely arrive at true self-knowledge, except through 
loss of property and reputation. Sickness will not always 
help him do it; not always the death-hour! 

But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood 
confronting the fierce outbreak of Hepzibah’s wrath. With¬ 
out premeditation, to her own surprise, and indeed terror, 
she had given vent, for once, to the inveteracy of her resent¬ 
ment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty years. 

Thus far the Judge’s countenance had expressed mild for¬ 
bearance,—grave and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin’s 
unbecoming violence,—free and Christian-like forgiveness 
of the wrong inflicted by her words. But when those words 
were irrevocably spoken his look assumed sternness, the 
sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and this with so 
natural and imperceptible a change, that it seemed as if the 
iron man had stood there from the first, and the meek man 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


241 


not at all. The effect was as when the light, vapory clouds, 
with their soft coloring, suddenly vanish from the stony 
brow of a precipitous mountain, and leave there the frown 
which you at once feel to be eternal. Hepzibah almost 
adopted the insane belief that it was her old Puritan ancestor, 
and not the modern Judge, on whom she had just been wreak¬ 
ing the bitterness of her heart. Never did a man show 
stronger proof of the lineage attributed to him than Judge 
Pyncheon, at this crisis, by his unmistakable resemblance 
to the picture in the inner room. 

“Cousin Hepzibah,” said he, very calmly, “it is time to 
have done with this.” 

“With all my heart!” answered she. “Then, why do you 
persecute us any longer? Leave poor Clifford and me in 
peace. Neither of us desires anything better!” 

“It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this 
house,” continued the Judge. “Do not act like a mad¬ 
woman, Hepzibah! I am his only friend, and an all-powerful 
one. Has it never occurred to you,—are you so blind as 
not to have seen,—that, without not merely my consent, 
but my efforts, my representations, the exertion of my whole 
influence, political, official, personal, Clifford would never 
have been what you call free? Did you think his release a 
triumph over me? Not so, my good cousin; not so, by any 
means! The furthest possible from that! No; but it was 
the accomplishment of a purpose long entertained on my 
part. I set him free! ” 

“You!” answered Hepzibah. “I never will believe it! 
He owed his dungeon to you; his freedom to God’s provi¬ 
dence ! ” 

“I set him free!” reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the 
calmest composure. “And I came hither now to decide 
whether he shall retain his freedom. It will depend upon 
himself. For this purpose, I must see him,” 


242 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


“Never!—it would drive him mad!” exclaimed Hepzibah, 
but with an irresoluteness sufficiently perceptible to the 
keen eye of the Judge; for, without the slightest faith in 
his good intentions, she knew not whether there was most 
to dread in yielding or resistance. “And why should you 
wish to see this wretched, broken man, who retains hardly 
a fraction of his intellect, and will hide even that from an 
eye which has no love in it ?” 

“He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!” said 
the Judge, with well-grounded confidence in the benignity 
of his aspect. “But, Cousin Hepzibah, you confess a great 
deal, and very much to the purpose. Now, listen, and 1 
will frankly explain my reasons for insisting on this inter¬ 
view. At the death, thirty years since, of our uncle Jaffrey, 
it was found,—I know not whether the circumstance ever 
attracted much of your attention, among the sadder interests 
that clustered round that event,—but it was found that his 
visible estate, of every kind, fell far short of any estimate 
ever made of it. He was supposed to be immensely rich. 
Nobody doubted that he stood among the weightiest men 
of his day. It was one of his eccentricities, however,—and 
not altogether a folly, neither,—to conceal the amount of 
his property by making distant and foreign investments, 
perhaps under other names than his own, and by various 
means, familiar enough to capitalists, but unnecessary here 
to be specified. By Uncle Jaffrey’s last will and testament, 
as you are aware, his entire property was bequeathed to me, 
with the single exception of a life interest to yourself in this 
old family mansion, and the strip of patrimonial estate re¬ 
maining attached to it.” 

“And do you seek to deprive us of that?” asked Hep¬ 
zibah, unable to restrain her bitter contempt. “Is this your 
price for ceasing to persecute poor Clifford?” 

“Certainly not, my dear cousin!” answered the Judge, 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


243 


smiling benevolently. “On the contrary, as you must do me 
the justice to own, I have constantly expressed my readiness 
to double or treble your resources, whenever you should 
make up your mind to accept any kindness of that nature 
at the hands of your kinsman. No, no! But here lies the 
gist of the matter. Of my uncle’s unquestionably great 
estate, as I have said, not the half—no, not one-third, as I 
am fully convinced—was apparent after his death. Now, I 
have the best possible reasons for believing that your brother 
Clifford can give me a clew to the recovery of the remainder.” 

“Clifford!—Clifford know of any hidden wealth?—Clif¬ 
ford have it in his power to make you rich?” cried the old 
gentlewoman, affected with a sense of something like ridicule, 
at the idea. “Impossible! You deceive yourself! It is 
really a thing to laugh at!” 

“It is as certain as that I stand here!” said Judge Pyn- 
cheon, striking his gold-headed cane on the floor, and at the 
same time stamping his foot, as if to express his conviction 
the more forcibly by the whole emphasis of his substantial 
person. “Clifford told me so himself!” 

“No, no!” exclaimed Hepzibah, incredulously. “You are 
dreaming, Cousin Jaffrey!” 

“I do not belong to the dreaming class of men,” said the 
Judge, quietly. “Some months before my uncle’s death, 
Clifford boasted to me of the possession of the secret of in¬ 
calculable wealth. His purpose was to taunt me, and excite 
my curiosity. I know it well. But, from a pretty distinct 
recollection of the particulars of our conversation, I am 
thoroughly convinced that there was truth in what he said. 
Clifford, at this moment, if he chooses,—and choose he must! 
—can inform me where to find the schedule, the documents, 
the evidences, in whatever shape they exist, of the vast 
amount of Uncle Jaffrey’s missing property. He has the 
secret. His boast was no idle word. It had a directness, an 


244 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


emphasis, a particularity, that showed a backbone of solid 
meaning within the mystery of his expression.” 

“But what could have been Clifford’s object,” asked Hep- 
zibah, “in concealing it so long?” 

“It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature,” 
replied the Judge, turning up his eyes. “He looked upon me 
as his enemy. He considered me as the cause of his over¬ 
whelming disgrace, his imminent peril of death, his ir¬ 
retrievable ruin. There was no great probability, therefore, 
of his volunteering information, out of his dungeon, that 
should elevate me still higher on the ladder of prosperity. 
But the moment has now come when he must give up his 
secret.” 

“And what if he should refuse?” inquired Hepzibah. “Or, 
—as I steadfastly believe,—what if he has no knowledge of 
this wealth?” 

“My dear cousin,” said Judge Pyncheon, with a quietude 
which he had the power of making more formidable than 
any violence, “since your brother’s return, I have taken the 
precaution (a highly proper one in the near kinsman and 
natural guardian of an individual so situated) to have his 
deportment and habits constantly and carefully overlooked. 
Your neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has 
passed in the garden. The butcher, the baker, the fish¬ 
monger, some of the customers of your shop, and many a 
prying old woman, have told me several of the secrets of 
your interior. A still larger circle—I myself, among the 
rest—can testify to his extravagances at the arched window. 
Thousands beheld him, a week or two ago, on the point of 
flinging himself thence into the street. From all this testi¬ 
mony, I am led to apprehend—reluctantly, and with deep 
grief—that Clifford’s misfortunes have so affected his intel¬ 
lect, never very strong, that he cannot safely remain at large. 
The alternative, you must be aware,—and its adoption will 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


245 


depend entirely on the decision which I am now about to 
make,—the alternative is his confinement, probably for the 
remainder of his life, in a public asylum for persons in his 
unfortunate state of mind.” 

“You cannot mean it!” shrieked Hepzibah. 

“Should my cousin Clifford,” continued Judge Pyncheon, 
wholly undisturbed, “from mere malice, and hatred of one 
whose interests ought naturally to be dear to him,—a mode 
of passion that, as often as any other, indicates mental 
disease,—should he refuse me the information so important 
to myself, and which he assuredly possesses, I shall consider 
it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind of his 
insanity. And, once sure of the course pointed out by 
conscience, you know me too well, Cousin Hepzibah, to en¬ 
tertain a doubt that I shall pursue it.” 

“0, Jaffrey,—Cousin Jaffrey!” cried Hepzibah, mourn¬ 
fully, not passionately, “it is you that are diseased in mind, 
not Clifford! You have forgotten that a woman was your 
mother!—that you have had sisters, brothers, children of 
your own!—or that there ever was affection between man 
and man, or pity from one man to another, in this miserable 
world! Else, how could you have dreamed of this? You 
are not young, Cousin Jaffrey!—no, nor middle-aged,—but 
already an old man! The hair is white upon your head! 
How many years have you to live ? Are you not rich enough 
for that little time? Shall you be hungry,—shall you lack 
clothes, or a roof to shelter you,—between this point and 
the grave? No! but, with the half of what you now possess, 
you could revel in costly food and wines, and build a house 
twice as splendid as you now inhabit, and make a far greater 
show to the world,—and yet leave riches to your only son, 
to make him bless the hour of your death! Then, why should 
you do this cruel, cruel thing ?—so mad a thing, that I know 
not whether to call it wicked! Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this 


246 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


hard and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two 
hundred years. You are but doing over again, in another 
shape, what your ancestor before you did, and sending down 
to your posterity the curse inherited from him! ” 

“Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed 
the Judge, with the impatience natural to a reasonable man, 
on hearing anything so utterly absurd as the above, in a 
discussion about matters of business. “I have told you my 
determination. I am not apt to change. Clifford must give 
up his secret or take the consequences. And let him decide 
quickly; for I have several affairs to attend to this morning, 
and an important dinner engagement with some political 
friends.” 

“Clifford has no secret!” answered Hepzibah. “And God 
will not let you do the thing you meditate!” 

“We shall see,” said the unmoved Judge. “Meanwhile, 
choose whether you will summon Clifford, and allow this 
business to be amicably settled by an interview between two 
kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures, which I should 
be most happy to feel myself justified in avoiding. The re¬ 
sponsibility is altogether on your part.” 

“You are stronger than I,” said Hepzibah, after a brief 
consideration; “and you have no pity in your strength! 
Clifford is not now insane; but the interview which you 
insist upon may go far to make him so. Nevertheless, know¬ 
ing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to allow 
you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of his 
possessing any valuable secret. I will call Clifford. Be 
merciful in your dealings with him!—be far more merciful 
than your heart bids you be!—for God is looking at you, 
Jaffrey Pyncheon!” 

The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the 
foregoing conversation had passed, into the parlor, and 
flung himself heavily into the great ancestral chair. Many 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 


247 


a former Pyncheon had found repose in its capacious arms: 
rosy children, after their sports; young men, dreamy with 
love; grown men, weary with cares; old men, burdened with 
winters,—they had mused, and slumbered, and departed to 
a yet profounder sleep. It had been a long tradition, though 
a doubtful one, that this was the very chair, seated in which, 
the earliest of the Judge’s New England forefathers—he 
whose picture still hung upon the wall—had given a dead 
man’s silent and stern reception to the throng of distinguished 
guests. From that hour of evil omen until the present, it 
may be,—though we know not the secret of his heart,—but 
it may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever sunk 
into the chair than this same Judge Pyncheon, whom we 
have just beheld so immitigably hard and resolute. Surely, 
it must have been at no slight cost that he had thus fortified 
his soul with iron. Such calmness is a mightier effort than 
the violence of weaker men. And there was yet a heavy 
task for him to do. Was it a little matter,—a trifle to be 
prepared for in a single moment, and to be rested from in 
another moment,—that he must now, after thirty years, en¬ 
counter a kinsman risen from a living tomb, and wrench a 
secret from him, or else consign him to a living tomb again? 

“Did you speak?” asked Hepzibah, looking in from the 
threshold of the parlor; for she imagined that the Judge 
had uttered some sound which she was anxious to interpret 
as a relenting impulse. “I thought you called me back.” 

“No, no!” gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon, with a harsh 
frown, while his brow grew almost a black purple, in the 
shadow of the room. “Why should I call you back? Time 
flies! Bid Clifford come to me!” 

The Judge had taken his watch from his vest-pocket and 
now held it in his hand, measuring the interval which was 
to ensue before the appearance of Clifford. 


XVI 


Clifford’s chamber 

Never had the old house appeared so dismal to poor Hep- 
zibah as when she departed on that wretched errand. There 
was a strange aspect in it. As she trode along the foot-worn 
passages, and opened one crazy door after another, and 
ascended the creaking staircase, she gazed wistfully and 
fearfully around. It would have been no marvel, to her 
excited mind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the 
rustle of dead people’s garments, or pale visages awaiting 
her on the landing-place above. Her nerves were set all 
ajar by the scene of passion and terror through which she 
had just struggled. Her colloquy with Judge Pyncheon, 
who so perfectly represented the person and attributes of 
the founder of the family, had called back the dreary past. 
It weighed upon her heart. Whatever she had heard, from 
legendary aunts and grandmothers, concerning the good 
or evil fortunes of the Pyncheons,—stories which had here¬ 
tofore been kept warm in her remembrance by the chimney- 
corner glow that was associated with them,—now recurred 
to her, somber, ghastly, ‘cold, like most passages of family 
history, when brooded over in melancholy mood. The whole 
seemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing itself 
in successive generations, with one general hue, and varying 
in little, save the outline. But Hepzibah now felt as if the 
Judge, and Clifford, and herself,—they three together,— 
were on the point of adding another incident to the annals 

248 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 


249 


of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and sorrow, which 
would cause it to stand out from all the rest. Thus it is 
that the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself an 
individuality, and a character of climax, which it is destined 
to lose after a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue 
common to the grave or glad events of many years ago. 
It is but for a moment, comparatively, that anything looks 
strange or startling,—a truth that has the bitter and the 
sweet in it. 

But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of some¬ 
thing unprecedented at that instant passing and soon to be 
accomplished. Her nerves were in a shake. Instinctively 
she paused before the arched window, and looked out upon 
the street, in order to seize its permanent objects with her 
mental grasp, and thus to steady herself fr6m the reel and 
vibration which affected her more immediate sphere. It 
brought her up, as we may say, with a kind of shock, when 
she beheld everything under the same appearance as the 
day before, and numberless preceding days, except for the 
difference between sunshine and sullen storm. Her eyes 
traveled along the street, from doorstep to doorstep, noting 
the wet sidewalks, with here and there a puddle in hollows 
that had been imperceptible until filled with water. She 
screwed her dim optics to their acutest point, in the hope 
of making out, with greater distinctness, a certain window, 
where she half saw, half guessed, that a tailor’s seamstress 
was sitting at her work. Hepzibah flung herself upon that 
unknown woman’s companionship, even thus far off. Then 
she was attracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched 
its moist and glistening top, and its splashing wheels, until 
it had turned the corner, and refused to carry any further 
her idly trifling, because appalled and overburdened, mind. 
When the vehicle had disappeared, she allowed herself still 
another loitering moment; for the patched figure of good 


250 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Uncle Venner was now visible, coming slowly from the 
head of the street downward, with a rheumatic limp, be¬ 
cause the east wind had got into his joints. Hepzibah wished 
that he would pass yet more slowly, and befriend her shiver¬ 
ing solitude a little longer. Anything that would take her 
out of the grievous present, and interpose human beings be¬ 
twixt herself and what was nearest to her,—whatever would 
defer, for an instant, the inevitable errand on which she was 
bound,—all such impediments were welcome. Next to the 
lightest heart, the heaviest is apt to be most playful. 

Hepzibah had little hardihood for her own proper pain and 
far less for what she must inflict on Clifford. Of so slight 
a nature, and so shattered by his previous calamities, it 
could not well be short of utter ruin to bring him face to 
face with the hard, relentless man, who had been his evil 
destiny through life. Even had there been no bitter recol¬ 
lections, nor any hostile interest now at stake between them, 
the mere natural repugnance of the more sensitive system 
to the massive, weighty, and unimpressible one, must, in 
itself, have been disastrous to the former. It would be like 
flinging a porcelain vase, with already a crack in it, against 
a granite column. Never before had Hepzibah so adequately 
estimated the powerful character of her cousin Jaffrey,—pow¬ 
erful by intellect, energy of will, the long habit of acting 
among men, and, as she believed, by his unscrupulous pur¬ 
suit of selfish ends through evil means. It did but increase 
the difficulty that Judge Pyncheon was under a delusion as 
to the secret which he supposed Clifford to possess. Men 
of his strength of purpose, and customary sagacity, if they 
chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical matters, so 
wedge it and fasten it among things known to be true, that 
to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficult than 
pulling up an oak. Thus, as the Judge required an impos¬ 
sibility of Clifford, the latter, as he could not perform it, 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 


251 


must needs perish. For what, in the grasp of a man like 
this, was to become of Clifford’s soft poetic nature, that 
never should have had a task more stubborn than to set a 
life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and rhythm of musical 
cadences! Indeed, what had become of it already? Broken! 
Blighted! All but annihilated! Soon to be wholly so! 

For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah’s mind, 
whether Clifford might not really have such knowledge of 
their deceased uncle’s vanished estate as the Judge imputed 
to him. She remembered some vague intimations, on her 
brother’s part, which—if the supposition were not essentially 
preposterous—might have been so interpreted. There had 
been schemes of travel and residence abroad, day-dreams 
of brilliant life at home, and splendid castles in the air, which 
it would have required boundless wealth to build and realize. 
Had this wealth been in her power, how gladly would Hep- 
zibah have bestowed it all upon her iron-hearted kinsman, 
to buy for Clifford the freedom and seclusion of the desolate 
old house! But she believed that her brother’s schemes were 
as destitute of actual substance and purpose as a child’s 
pictures of its future life, while sitting in a little chair by 
its mother’s knee. Clifford had none but shadowy gold at 
his command; and it was not the stuff to satisfy Judge 
Pyncheon! 

Was there no help, in their extremity? It seemed strange 
that there should be none, with a city round about her. It 
would be so easy to throw up the window, and send forth a 
shriek, at the strange agony of which everybody would come 
hastening to the rescue, well understanding it to be the cry 
of a human soul, at some dreadful crisis! But how wild, 
how almost laughable, the fatality,—and yet how continually 
it comes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in this dull delirium of 
a world,—that whosoever, and with however kindly a pur¬ 
pose, should come to help, they would be sure to help the 


252 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


strongest side! Might and wrong combined, like iron mag¬ 
netized, are endowed with irresistible attraction. There would 
be Judge Pyncheon,—a person eminent in the public view, 
of high station and great wealth, a philanthropist, a member 
of Congress and of the church, and intimately associated with 
whatever else bestows good name,—so imposing, in these 
advantageous lights, that Hepzibah herself could hardly help 
shrinking from her own conclusions as to his hollow in¬ 
tegrity. The Judge, on one side! And who, on the other? 
The guilty Clifford! Once a byword! Now, an indistinctly 
remembered ignominy! 

Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the Judge 
would draw all human aid to his own behalf, Hepzibah was 
so unaccustomed to act for herself, that the least word of 
counsel would have swayed her to any mode of action. Little 
Phoebe Pyncheon would at once have lighted up the whole 
scene, if not by any available suggestion, yet simply by the 
warm vivacity of her character. The idea of the artist oc¬ 
curred to Hepzibah. Young and unknown, mere vagrant 
adventurer as he was, she had been conscious of a force in 
Holgrave which might well adapt him to be the champion of 
a crisis. With this thought in her mind, she unbolted a door, 
cobwebbed and long disused, but which had served as a 
former medium of communication between her own part of 
the house and the gable where the wandering daguerreotypist 
had now established his temporary home. He was not there. 
A book, face downward, on the table, a roll of manuscript, 
a half-written sheet, a newspaper, some tools of his present 
occupation, and several rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed 
an impression as if he were close at hand. But, at this period 
of the day, as Hepzibah might have anticipated, the artist 
was at his public rooms. With an impulse of idle curiosity, 
that flickered among her heavy thoughts, she looked at one 
of the daguerreotypes, and beheld Judge Pyncheon frowning 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 


253 


at her. Fate stared her in the face. She turned back from 
her fruitless quest, with a heart-sinking sense of disappoint¬ 
ment. In all her years of seclusion, she had never felt, as 
now, what it was to be alone. It seemed as if the house 
stood in a desert, or, by some spell, was made invisible to 
those who dwelt around, or passed beside it; so that any 
mode of misfortune, miserable accident, or crime might hap¬ 
pen in it without the possibility of aid. In her grief and 
wounded pride, Hepzibah had spent her life in divesting 
herself of friends; she had wilfully cast off the support which 
God has ordained his creatures to need from one another; 
and it was now her punishment, that Clifford and herself 
would fall the easier victims to their kindred enemy. 

Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes,— 
scowling, poor, dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of Heaven! 
—and strove hard to send up a prayer through the dense 
gray pavement of clouds. Those mists had gathered, as if 
to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble, doubt, 
confusion, and chill indifference, between earth and the 
better regions. Her faith was too weak; the prayer too 
heavy to be thus uplifted. It fell back, a lump of lead, 
upon her heart. It smote her with the wretched conviction 
that Providence intermeddled not in these petty wrongs of 
one individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these 
little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its 
mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe 
at once. Its vastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did 
not see that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every 
cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God’s care and pity 
for every separate need. 

At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture 
that she was to inflict on Clifford,—her reluctance to which 
was the true cause of her loitering at the window, her search 
for the artist, and even her abortive prayer,—dreading, also, 


254 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyncheon from below stairs, 
chiding her delay,—she crept slowly, a pale, grief-stricken 
figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost torpid limbs, 
slowly to her brother’s door, and knocked! 

There was no reply! 

And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous 
with the shrinking purpose which directed it, had smitten 
so feebly against the door that the sound could hardly have 
gone inward. She knocked again. Still, no response! Nor 
was it to be wondered at. She had struck with the entire 
force of her heart’s vibration, communicating, by some 
subtile magnetism, her own terror to the summons. Clifford 
would turn his face to the pillow, and cover his head be¬ 
neath the bedclothes, like a startled child at midnight. She 
knocked a third time, three regular strokes, gentle, but per¬ 
fectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for, modulate it 
with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot help play¬ 
ing some tune of what we feel, upon the senseless wood. 

Clifford returned no answer. 

“Clifford! dear brother!” said Hepzibah. “Shall I 
come in?” 

A silence. 

Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his 
name, without result; till, thinking her brother’s sleep un- 
wontedly profound, she undid the door, and entering, found 
the chamber vacant. How could he have come forth, and 
when, without her knowledge? Was it possible that, in 
spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the irksomeness 
within doors, he had betaken himself to his customary haunt 
in the garden, and was now shivering under the cheerless 
shelter of the summer-house? She hastily threw up a win¬ 
dow, thrust forth her turbaned head and the half of her 
gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden through, as 
completely as her dim vision would allow. She could see 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 


255 


the interior of the summer-house, and its circular seat, 
kept moist by the droppings of the roof. It had no occupant. 
Clifford was not thereabouts; unless, indeed, he had crept 
for concealment (as, for a moment, Hepzibah fancied might 
be the case) into a great, wet mass of tangled and broad¬ 
leaved shadow, where the squash-vines were clambering 
tumultuously upon an old wooden framework, set casually 
aslant against the fence. This could not be, however; he 
was not there; for, while Hepzibah was looking, a strange 
grimalkin stole forth from the very spot, and picked his way 
across the garden. Twice he paused to snuff the air, and then 
anew directed his course towards the parlor window. 
Whether it was only on account of the stealthy, prying man¬ 
ner common to the race, or that this cat seemed to have 
more than ordinary mischief in his thoughts, the old gentle¬ 
woman, in spite of her much perplexity, felt an impulse to 
drive the animal away, and accordingly flung down a win¬ 
dow-stick. The cat stared up at her, like a detected thief or 
murderer, and, the next instant, took to flight. No other liv¬ 
ing creature was visible in the garden. Chanticleer and 
his family had either not left their roost, disheartened 
by the interminable rain, or had done the next wisest 
thing, by seasonably returning to it. Hepzibah closed the 
window. 

But where was Clifford? Could it be that, aware of the 
presence of his Evil Destiny, he had crept silently down 
the staircase, while the Judge and Hepzibah stood talking 
in the shop, and had softly undone the fastenings of the 
outer door, and made his escape into the street ? With that 
thought, she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yet child¬ 
like aspect, in the old-fashioned garments which he wore 
about the house; a figure such as one sometimes imagines 
himself to be, with the world’s eye upon him, in a troubled 
dream. This figure of her wretched brother would go wander- 


256 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


ing through the city, attracting all eyes, and everybody’s 
wonder and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to be shud¬ 
dered at because visible at noontide. To incur the ridicule 
of the younger crowd, that knew him not,—the harsher scorn 
and indignation of a few old men, who might recall his once 
familiar features! To be the sport of boys, who, when old 
enough to run about the streets, have no more reverence 
for what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is sad,— 
no more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape 
in which it embodies itself,—than if Satan were the father 
of them all! Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill cries, 
and cruel laughter,—insulted by the filth of the public ways, 
which they would fling upon him,—or, as it might well be, 
distracted by the mere strangeness of his situation, though 
nobody should afflict him with so much as a thoughtless word, 
—what wonder if Clifford were to break into some wild ex¬ 
travagance which was certain to be interpreted as lunacy? 
Thus Judge Pyncheon’s fiendish scheme would be ready ac¬ 
complished to his hands! 

Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost com¬ 
pletely water-girdled. The wharves stretched out towards 
the center of the harbor, and, in this inclement weather, were 
deserted by the ordinary throng of merchants, laborers, and 
sea-faring men; each wharf a solitude, with the vessels 
moored stem and stern, along its misty length. Should her 
brother’s aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and he but 
bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not 
bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his 
reach, and that, with a single step, or the slightest over¬ 
balance of his body, he might be forever beyond his kins¬ 
man’s gripe? Oh, the temptation! To make of his pon¬ 
derous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden weight 
upon him, and never rise again! 

The horror of this last conception was too much for Hep- 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 257 

zibah. Even Jaffrey Pyncheon must help her now! She 
hastened down the staircase, shrieking as she went. 

“Clifford is gone! ” she cried. “I cannot find my brother! 
Help, Jaffrey Pyncheon! Some harm will happen to him!” 

She threw open the parlor-door. But, what with the shade 
of branches across the windows, and the smoke-blackened 
ceiling, and the dark oak-paneling of the walls, there was 
hardly so much daylight in the room that Hepzibah’s im¬ 
perfect sight could accurately distinguish the Judge’s figure. 
She was certain, however, that she saw him sitting in the 
ancestral armchair, near the center of the floor, with his face 
somewhat averted, and looking towards a window. So firm 
and quiet is the nervous system of such men as Judge Pyn¬ 
cheon, that he had perhaps stirred not more than once 
since her departure, but, in the hard composure of his 
temperament, retained the position into which accident had 
thrown him. 

“I tell you, Jaffrey,” cried Hepzibah, impatiently, as she 
turned from the parlor-door to search other rooms, “my 
brother is not in his chamber! You must help me seek him! ” 

But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let himself be 
startled from an easy-chair with haste ill-befitting either 
the dignity of his character or his broad personal basis, by 
the alarm of an hysteric woman. Yet, considering his own 
interest in the matter, he might have bestirred himself with 
a little more alacrity. 

“Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?” screamed Hepzibah, 
as she again approached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual 
search elsewhere. “Clifford is gone!” 

At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging 
from within, appeared Clifford himself! His face was pre- 
ternaturally pale; so deadly white, indeed, that, through all 
the glimmering indistinctness of the passage-way, Hepzibah 
could discern his features, as if a light fell on them alone. 


258 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient to 
illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery, 
coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture. As 
Clifford stood on the threshold, partly turning back, he 
pointed his finger within the parlor, and shook it slowly as 
though he would have summoned, not Hepzibah alone, but 
the whole world, to gaze at some object inconceivably 
ridiculous. This action, so ill-timed and extravagant,—ac¬ 
companied, too, with a look that showed more like joy than 
any other kind of excitement,—compelled Hepzibah to dread 
that her stern kinsman’s ominous visit had driven her poor 
brother to absolute insanity. Nor could she otherwise ac¬ 
count for the Judge’s quiescent mood than by supposing him 
craftily on the watch, while Clifford developed these symp¬ 
toms of a distracted mind. 

“Be quiet, Clifford!” whispered his sister, raising her hand 
to impress caution. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, be quiet! ” 

“Let him be quiet! What can he do better?” answered 
Clifford, with a still wilder gesture, pointing into the room 
which he had just quitted. “As for us, Hepzibah, we can 
dance now!—we can sing, laugh, play, do what we will! 
The weight is gone, Hepzibah! it is gone off this weary old 
world, and we may be as light-hearted as little Phoebe 
herself!” 

And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh, 
*still pointing his finger at the object, invisible to Hepzibah, 
within the parlor. She was seized with a sudden intuition of 
some horrible thing. She thrust herself past Clifford, and 
disappeared into the room; but almost immediately returned, 
with a cry choking in her throat. Gazing at her brother 
with an affrighted glance of inquiry, she beheld him all in 
a tremor and a quake, from head to foot, while, amid these 
commoted elements of passion or alarm, still flickered his 
gusty mirth. 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 


259 


“My God! what is to become of us!” gasped Hepzibah. 

“Come!” said Clifford, in a tone of brief decision, most 
unlike what was usual with him. “We stay here too long! 
Let us leave the old house to our cousin Jaffrey! He will 
take good care of it! ” 

Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak,—a 
garment of long ago,—in which he had constantly muffled 
himself during these days of easterly storm. He beckoned 
with his hand, and intimated, so far as she could compre¬ 
hend him, his purpose that they should go together from 
the house. There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments, 
in the lives of persons who lack real force of character,— 
moments of test, in which courage would most assert itself,— 
but where these individuals, if left to themselves, stagger 
aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever guidance may 
befall them, even if it be a child’s. No matter how pre¬ 
posterous or insane, a purpose is a God-send to them. 
Hepzibah had reached this point. Unaccustomed to action 
or responsibility,—full of horror at what she had seen, and 
afraid to inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to 
pass,—affrighted at the fatality which seemed to pursue her 
brother,—stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere of 
dread, which filled the house as with a death-smell, and 
obliterated all definiteness of thought,—she yielded without 
a question, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford 
expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a dream, 
when the will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so destitute 
of this faculty, had found it in the tension of the crisis. 

“Why do you delay so ?” cried he, sharply. “Put on your 
cloak and hood, or whatever it pleases you to wear! No 
matter what; you cannot look beautiful nor brilliant, my 
poor Hepzibah! Take your purse, with money in it, and 
come along!” 

Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else 


260 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


were to be done or thought of. She began to wonder, it is 
true, why she did not wake up, and at what still more intol¬ 
erable pitch of dizzy trouble her spirit wpuld struggle out 
of the maze, and make her conscious that nothing of all 
this had actually happened. Of course it was not real; no 
such black, easterly day as this had yet begun to be; Judge 
Pyncheon had not talked with her; Clifford had not laughed, 
pointed, beckoned her away with him; but she had merely 
been afflicted—as lonely sleepers often are—with a great 
deal of unreasonable misery, in a morning dream! 

“Now—now—I shall certainly awake!” thought Hepzibah, 
as she went to and fro, making her little preparations. “I can 
bear it no longer! I must wake up now! ” 

But it came not, that awakening moment! It came not, 
even when, just before they left the house, Clifford stole to 
the parlor-door, and made a parting obeisance to the sole 
occupant of the room. 

“What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now!” whis¬ 
pered he to Hepzibah. “Just when he fancied he had me 
completely under his thumb! Come, come; make haste! 
or he will start up, like Giant Despair in pursuit of Christian 
and Hopeful, and catch us yet!” 

As they passed into the street, Clifford directed Hepzibah’s 
attention to something on one of the posts of the front door. 
It was merely the initials of his own name, which, with 
somewhat of his characteristic grace about the forms of the 
letters, he had cut there when a boy. The brother and sister 
departed, and left Judge Pyncheon sitting in the old home 
of his forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and lumpish that 
we can liken him to nothing better than a defunct nightmare, 
which had perished in the midst of its wickedness, and left a 
flabby corpse on the breast of the tormented one, to be 
gotten rid of as it might! 


XVII 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 

Summer as it was, the east wind set poor Hepzibah’s few 
remaining teeth chattering in her head, as she and Clifford 
faced it, on their way up Pyncheon Street, and towards the 
center of the town. Not merely was it the shiver which 
this pitiless blast brought to her frame (although her feet 
and hands, especially, had never seemed so death-a-cold as 
now), but there was a moral sensation, mingling itself with 
the physical chill, and causing her to shake more in spirit 
than in body. The world’s broad, bleak atmosphere was 
all so comfortless! Such, indeed, is the impression which it 
makes on every new adventurer, even if he plunge into it 
while the warmest tide of life is bubbling through his veins. 
What, then, must it have been to Hepzibah and Clifford,—so 
time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in their inex¬ 
perience,—as they left the doorstep, and passed from be¬ 
neath the wide shelter of the Pyncheon Elm! They were 
wandering all abroad, on precisely such a pilgrimage as a 
child often meditates, to the world’s end, with perhaps a 
sixpence and a biscuit in his pocket. In Hepzibah’s mind, 
there was the wretched consciousness of being adrift. She 
had lost the faculty of self-guidance; but, in view of the 
difficulties around her, felt it hardly worth an effort to 
regain it, and was, moreover, incapable of making one. 

As they proceeded on their strange expedition she now 
and then cast a look sidelong at Clifford, and could not but 

261 


262 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


observe that he was possessed and swayed by a powerful 
excitement. It was this, indeed, that gave him the control 
which he had at once, and so irresistibly, established over 
his movements. It not a little resembled the exhilaration of 
wine. Or, it might more fancifully be compared to a joyous 
piece of music, played with wild vivacity, but upon a dis¬ 
ordered instrument. As the cracked jarring note might 
always be heard, and as it jarred loudest amid the loftiest 
exultation of the melody, so was there a continual quake 
through Clifford, causing him most to quiver while he wore 
a triumphant smile, and seemed almost under a necessity 
to skip in his gait. 

They met few people abroad, even on passing from the 
retired neighborhood of the House of the Seven Gables into 
what was ordinarily the more thronged and busier portion 
of the town. Glistening sidewalks, with little pools of rain, 
here and there, along their unequal surface; umbrellas dis¬ 
played ostentatiously in the shop-windows, as if the life of 
trade had concentered itself in that one article; wet leaves 
of the horse-chestnut or elm-trees, torn off untimely by the 
blast and scattered along the public way; an unsightly ac¬ 
cumulation of mud in the middle of the street, which per¬ 
versely grew the more unclean for its long and laborious 
washing,—these were the more definable points of a very 
somber picture. In the way of movement, and human life, 
there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, its driver pro¬ 
tected by a waterproof cap over his head and shoulders; the 
forlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept out 
of some subterranean sewer, and was stooping along the 
kennel, and poking the wet rubbish with a stick, in quest 
of rusty nails; a merchant or two, at the door of the post- 
office, together with an editor, and a miscellaneous politician, 
awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea-captains 
at the window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 


263 


at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting 
at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip. What 
a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they 
have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were 
carrying along with them! But their two figures attracted 
hardly so much notice as that of a young girl, who passed at 
the same instant, and happened to raise her skirt a trifle 
too high above her ankles. Had it been a sunny and cheerful 
day, they could hardly have gone through the streets with¬ 
out making themselves obnoxious to remark. Now, probably, 
they were felt to be in keeping with the dismal and bitter 
weather, and therefore did not stand out in strong relief; 
as if the sun were shining on them, but melted into the gray 
gloom, and were forgotten as soon as gone. 

Poor Hepzibah! Could she have understood this fact, 
it would have brought her some little comfort; for, to all 
her other troubles,—strange to say!—there was added the 
womanish and old-maiden-like misery arising from a sense 
of unseemliness in her attire. Thus, she was fain to shrink 
deeper into herself, as it were, as if in the hope of making 
people suppose that here was only a cloak and hood, thread¬ 
bare, and wofully faded, taking an airing in the midst of 
the storm, without any wearer! 

As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and un¬ 
reality kept dimly hovering round about her, and so diffus¬ 
ing itself into her system that one of her hands was hardly 
palpable to the touch of the other. Any certainty would 
have been preferable to this. She whispered to herself, 
again and again, “Am I awake?—Am I awake?” and some¬ 
times exposed her face to the chill spatter of the wind, for 
the sake of its rude assurance that she was. Whether it was 
Clifford’s purpose, or only chance, had led them thither, they 
now found themselves passing beneath the arched entrance 
of a large structure of gray stone. Within, there was a 


264 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


spacious breadth, and an airy height from floor to roof, now 
partially filled with smoke and steam, which eddied volumi¬ 
nously upward and formed a mimic cloud-region over their 
heads. A train of cars was just ready for a start; the loco¬ 
motive was fretting and fuming, like a steed impatient for 
a headlong rush; and the bell rang out its hasty peal, so 
well expressing the brief summons which life vouchsafes to 
us in its hurried career. Without question or delay,—with 
the irresistible decision, if not rather to be called reckless¬ 
ness, which had so strangely taken possession of him, and 
through him of Hepzibah,—Clifford impelled her towards 
the cars, and assisted her to enter. The signal was given; 
the engine puffed forth its short, quick breaths; the train 
began its movement; and, along with a hundred other pas¬ 
sengers, these two unwonted travelers sped onward like 
the wind. 

At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from 
everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they had been 
drawn into the great current of human life, and were swept 
away with it, as by the suction of fate itself. 

Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past inci¬ 
dents, inclusive of Judge Pyncheon’s visit, could be real, the 
recluse of the Seven Gables murmured in her brother’s ear,— 

“Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?” 

“A dream, Hepzibah!” repeated he, almost laughing in 
her face. “On the contrary, I have never been awake be¬ 
fore!” 

Meanwhile, looking from the window, they could see the 
world racing past them. At one moment, they were rattling 
through a solitude; the next, a village had grown up 
around them; a few breaths more, and it had vanished, as 
if swallowed by an earthquake. The spires of meeting-houses 
set adrift from their foundations; the broad-based hills 
glided away. Everything was unfixed from its age-long 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 265 

rest, and moving at whirlwind speed in a direction opposite 
to their own. 

Within the car there was the usual interior life of the 
railroad, offering little to the observation of other passengers, 
but full of novelty for this pair of strangely enfranchised 
prisoners. It was novelty enough, indeed, that there were 
fifty human beings in close relation with them, under one 
long and narrow roof, and drawn onward by the same mighty 
influence that had taken their two selves into its grasp. It 
seemed marvelous how all these people could remain so 
quietly in their seats, while so much noisy strength was at 
work in their behalf. Some, with tickets in their hats (long 
travelers these, before whom lay a hundred miles of rail¬ 
road), had plunged into the English scenery and adventures 
of pamphlet novels, and were keeping company with dukes 
and earls. Others, whose briefer span forbade their devot¬ 
ing themselves to studies so abstruse, beguiled the little 
tedium of the way with penny-papers. A party of girls, and 
one young man, on opposite sides of the car, found huge 
amusement in a game of ball. They tossed it to and fro, 
with peals of laughter that might be measured by mile- 
lengths; for, faster than the nimble ball could fly, the merry 
players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of their 
mirth afar behind, and ending their game under another 
sky than had witnessed its commencement. Boys, with 
apples, cakes, candy, and rolls of variously tinctured lozenges, 
—merchandise that reminded Hepzibah of her deserted shop, 
—appeared at each momentary stopping-place, doing up 
their business in a hurry, or breaking it short off, lest the 
market should ravish them away with it. New people con¬ 
tinually entered. Old acquaintances—for such they soon 
grew to be, in this rapid current of affairs—continually 
departed. Here and there, amid the rumble and the tumult, 
sat one asleep. Sleep; sport; business,; graver or lighter 


266 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

study; and the common and inevitable movement onward! 
It was life itself! 

Clifford’s naturally poignant sympathies were all aroused. 
He caught the color of what was passing about him, and 
threw it back more vividly than he received it, but mixed, 
nevertheless, with a lurid and portentous hue. Hepzibah, 
on the other hand, felt herself more apart from human kind 
than even in the seclusion which she had just quitted. 

“You are not happy, Hepzibah!” said Clifford, apart, in 
a tone of reproach. “You are thinking of that dismal old 
house, and of Cousin Jaffrey,”—here came the quake 
through him,—“and of Cousin Jaffrey sitting there, all by 
himself! Take my advice,—follow my example,—and let 
such things slip aside. Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah! 
—in the midst of life!—in the throng of our fellow-beings! 
Let you and I be happy—! As happy as that youth, and 
those pretty girls, at their game of ball!” 

“Happy!” thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at the 
word, of her dull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain in 
it,—“happy! He is mad already; and, if I could once feel 
myself broad awake, I should go mad too!” 

If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not remote 
from it. Fast and far as they had rattled and clattered along 
the iron track, they might just as well, as regarded Hepzi- 
bah’s mental images, have been passing up and down Pyn- 
cheon Street. With miles and miles of varied scenery between, 
there was no scene for her, save the seven old gable-peaks, 
with their moss, and the tuft of weeds in one of the angles, 
and the shop-window, and a customer shaking the door, and 
compelling the little bell to jingle fiercely, but without dis¬ 
turbing Judge Pyncheon! This one old house was every¬ 
where! It transported its great, lumbering bulk with more 
than railroad speed, and set itself phlegmatically down on 
whatever spots he glanced at. The quality of Hepzibah’s 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 


267 


mind was too unmalleable to take new impressions so readily 
as Clifford’s. He had a winged nature; she was rather of 
the vegetable kind, and could hardly be kept long alive, if 
drawn up by the roots. Thus it happened that the relation 
heretofore existing between her brother and herself was 
changed. At home, she was his guardian; here, Clifford had 
become hers, and seemed to comprehend whatever belonged 
to their new position with a singular rapidity of intelligence. 
He had been startled into manhood and intellectual vigor; 
or, at least, into a condition that resembled them, though it 
might be both diseased and transitory. 

The conductor now applied for their tickets; and Clif¬ 
ford, who had made himself the purse-bearer, put a bank¬ 
note into his hand, as he had observed others do. 

“For the lady and yourself?” asked the conductor. “And 
how far?” 

“As far as that will carry us,” said Clifford. “It is no 
great matter. We are riding for pleasure merely!” 

“You choose a strange day for it, sir!” remarked a 
gimlet-eyed old gentleman, on the other side of the car, 
looking at Clifford and his companion, as if curious to make 
them out. “The best chance of pleasure, in an easterly 
rain, I take it, is in a man’s own house, with a nice little 
fire in the chimney.” 

“I cannot precisely agree with you,” said Clifford, 
courteously bowing to the old gentleman, and at once taking 
up the clew of conversation which the latter had proffered. 
“It had just occurred to me, on the contrary, that this ad¬ 
mirable invention of the railroad—with the vast and 
inevitable improvements to be looked for, both as to 
speed and convenience—is destined to do away with those 
stale ideas of home and fireside, and substitute something 
better.” 

“In the name of common-sense,” asked the old gentleman, 


268 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


rather testily, “what can be better for a man than his own 
parlor and chimney-corner ?” 

“These things have not the merit which many good people 
attribute to them,” replied Clifford. “They may be said, 
in few and pithy words, to have ill served a poor purpose. 
My impression is, that our wonderfully increased and still 
increasing facilities of locomotion are destined to bring us 
round again to the nomadic state. You are aware, my dear 
sir,—you must have observed it in your own experience,— 
that all human progress is in a circle; or, to use a more 
accurate and beautiful figure, in an ascending spiral curve. 
While we fancy ourselves going straight forward, and attain¬ 
ing, at every step, an entirely new position of affairs, we do 
actually return to something long ago tried and abandoned, 
but which we now find etherealized, refined, and perfected 
to its ideal. The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy 
of the present and the future. To apply this truth to the 
topic now under discussion. In the early epochs of our 
race, men dwelt in temporary huts, of bowers of branches, 
as easily constructed as a bird’s-nest, and wdiich they built,— 
if it should be called building, when such sweet homes of a 
summer solstice rather grew than were made with hands,— 
which Nature, we will say, assisted them to rear where fruit 
abounded, where fish and game were plentiful, or, most 
especially, where the sense of beauty was to be gratified by 
a lovelier shade than elsewhere, and a more exquisite arrange¬ 
ment of lake, wood, and hill. This life possessed a charm, 
which, ever since man quitted it, has vanished from existence. 
And it typified something better than itself. It had its draw¬ 
backs; such as hunger and thirst, inclement weather, hot 
sunshine, and weary and foot-blistering marches over barren 
and ugly tracts, that lay between the sites desirable for their 
fertility and beauty. But in our ascending spiral, we escape 
all this. These railroads—could but the whistle be made 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 


269 


musical, and the rumble and the jar got rid of—are positively 
the greatest blessing that the ages have wrought out for us. 
They give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pil¬ 
grimage ; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, 
what can be any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? 
Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation 
than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he 
make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old 
worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in 
one sense, nowhere,—in a better sense, wherever the fit and 
beautiful shall offer him a home?” 

Clifford’s countenance glowed, as he divulged this theory; 
a youthful character shone out from within, converting the 
wrinkles and pallid duskiness of age into an almost trans¬ 
parent mask. The merry girls let their ball drop upon the 
floor, and gazed at him. They said to themselves, perhaps, 
that, before his hair was gray and the crow’s-feet tracked 
his temples, this now decaying man must have stamped 
the impress of his features on many a woman’s heart. But, 
alas! no woman’s eye had seen his face while it was 
beautiful. 

“I should scarcely call it an improved state of things,” 
observed Clifford’s new acquaintance, “to live everywhere 
and nowhere!” 

“Would you not?” exclaimed Clifford, with singular 
energy. “It is as clear to me as sunshine,—were there any 
in the sky,—that the greatest possible stumbling-blocks in 
the path of human happiness and improvement are these 
heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated with mortar, or hewn 
timber, fastened together with spike-nails, which men pain¬ 
fully contrive for their own torment, and call them house 
and home! The soul needs air; a wide sweep and frequent 
change of it. Morbid influences, in a thousand-fold variety, 
gather about hearths, and pollute the life of households. 


270 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES 


There is no such unwholesome atmosphere as that of an old 
home, rendered poisonous by one’s defunct forefathers and 
relatives. I speak of what I know. There is a certain house 
within my familiar recollection,—one of those peaked-gable 
(there are seven of them), projecting-storied edifices, such 
as you occasionally see in our older towns,—a rusty, crazy, 
creaky, dry-rotted, damp-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable 
old dungeon, with an arched window over the porch, and a 
little shop-door on one side, and a great melancholy elm 
before it! Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to this 
seven-gabled mansion (the fact is so very curious that I 
must needs mention it), immediately I have a vision or 
image of an elderly man, of remarkably stern countenance, 
sitting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead, stone-dead, with an 
ugly flow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with 
open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it. 
I could never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy 
what God meant me to do and enjoy!” 

His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel 
itself up, and wither into age. 

“Never, sir!” he repeated. “I could never draw cheerful 
breath there!” 

“I should think not,” said the old gentleman, eyeing Clif¬ 
ford earnestly, and rather apprehensively. “I should con¬ 
ceive not, sir, with that notion in your head!” 

“Surely not,” continued Clifford; “and it were a relief to 
me if that house could be torn down, or burnt up, and so 
the earth be rid of it, and grass be sown abundantly over its 
foundation. Not that I should ever visit its site again! for, 
sir, the farther I get away from it, the more does the joy, 
the lightsome freshness, the heart-leap, the intellectual dance, 
the youth, in short,—yes, my youth, my youth!—the more 
does it come back to me. No longer ago than this morning, 
I was old. I remember looking in the glass, and wondering 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 


271 


at my own gray hair, and the wrinkles, many and deep, right 
across my brow, and the furrows down my cheeks, and the 
prodigious trampling of crow’s-feet about my temples! It 
was too soon! I could not bear it! Age had no right to 
come! I had not lived! But now do I look old? If so, 
my aspect belies me strangely; for—a great weight being 
off my mind—I feel in the very heyday of my youth, with 
the world and my best days before me!” 

“I trust you may find it so,” said the old gentleman, who 
seemed rather embarrassed, and desirous of avoiding the 
observation which Clifford’s wild talk drew on them both. 
“You have my best wishes for it.” 

“For Heaven’s sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!” whispered 
his sister. “They think you mad.” 

“Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah! ” returned her brother. “No 
matter what they think! I am not mad. For the first 
time in thirty years my thoughts gush up and find words 
ready for them. I must talk, and I will!” 

He turned again towards the old gentleman, and renewed 
the conversation. 

“Yes, my dear sir,” said he, “it is my firm belief and hope 
that these terms of roof and hearth-stone, which have so 
long been held to embody something sacred, are soon to pass 
out of men’s daily use, and be forgotten. Just imagine, for 
a moment, how much of human evil will crumble away, with 
this one change! What we call real estate—the solid ground 
to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly 
all the guilt of this world rests. A man will commit almost 
any wrong,—he will heap up an immense pile of wicked¬ 
ness, as hard as granite, and which will weigh as heavily 
upon his soul, to eternal ages,—only to build a great, gloomy, 
dark-chambered mansion, for himself to die in, and for his 
posterity to be miserable in. He lays his own dead corpse 
beneath the underpinning, as one may say, and hangs his 


272 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

frowning picture on the wall, and, after thus converting 
himself into an evil destiny, expects his remotest great¬ 
grandchildren to be happy there! I do not speak wildly. I 
have just such a house in my mind’s eye!” 

“Then, sir,” said the old gentleman, getting anxious to 
drop the subject, “you are not to blame for leaving it.” 

“Within the lifetime of the child already born,” Clifford 
went on, “all this will be done away. The world is growing 
too ethereal and spiritual to bear these enormities a great 
while longer. To me,—though, for a considerable period 
of time, I have lived chiefly in retirement, and know less of 
such things than most men,—even to me, the harbingers of 
a better era are unmistakable. Mesmerism, now! Will that 
effect nothing, think you, towards purging away the grossness 
out of human life?” 

“All a humbug!” growled the old gentleman. 

“These rapping spirits, that little Phoebe told us of, the 
other day,” said Clifford,—“what are these but the mes¬ 
sengers of the spiritual world, knocking at the door of sub¬ 
stance? And it shall be flung wide open!” 

“A humbug, again!” cried the old gentleman, growing 
more and more testy, at these glimpses of Clifford’s 
metaphysics. “I should like to rap with a good stick 
on the empty pates of the dolts who circulate such non¬ 
sense ! ” 

“Then there is electricity,—the demon, the angel, the 
mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelligence!” ex¬ 
claimed Clifford. “Is that a humbug, too? Is it a fact— 
or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world 
of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of 
miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round 
globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, 
shall we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, 
and no longer the substance which we deemed it!” 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 


273 


“If you mean the telegraph/’ said the old gentleman, 
glancing his eye toward its wire, alongside the rail-track, 
“it is an excellent thing,—that is, of course, if the speculators 
in cotton and politics don’t get possession of it. A great thing, 
indeed, sir, particularly as regards the detection of bank- 
robbers and murderers.” 

“I don’t quite like it, in that point of view,” replied Clif¬ 
ford. “A bank-robber, and what you call a murderer, like¬ 
wise, has his rights, which men of enlightened humanity and 
conscience should regard in so much the more liberal spirit, 
because the bulk of society is prone to controvert their 
existence. An almost spiritual medium, like the electric 
telegraph, should be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and 
holy missions. Lovers, day by day,—hour by hour, if so 
often moved to do it,—might send their heart-throbs from 
Maine to Florida, with some such words as these, T love 
you forever!’—'My heart runs over with love!’—T love you 
more than I can!’ and, again, at the next message, T have 
lived an hour longer, and love you twice as much!’ Or, 
when a good man has departed, his distant friend should 
be conscious of an electric thrill, as from the world of happy 
spirits, telling him, 'Your dear friend is in bliss!’ Or, to 
an absent husband, should come tidings thus, 'An immortal 
being, of whom you are the father, has this moment come 
from God!’ and immediately its little voice would seem to 
have reached so far, and to be echoing in his heart. But for 
these poor rogues, the bank-robbers,—who after all, are 
about as honest as nine people in ten, except that they dis¬ 
regard certain formalities, and prefer to transact business at 
midnight rather than ’Change-hours,—and for these mur¬ 
derers, as you phrase it, who are often excusable in the 
motives of their deed, and deserve to be ranked among 
public benefactors, if we consider only its result,—for un¬ 
fortunate individuals like these, I really cannot applaud the 


274 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


enlistment of an immaterial and miraculous power in the 
universal world-hunt at their heels! ” 

“You can’t, hey?” cried the old gentleman, with a hard 
look. 

“Positively, no!” answered Clifford. “It puts them too 
miserably at disadvantage. For example, sir, in a dark, low, 
cross-beamed, paneled room of an old house, let us suppose 
a dead man, sitting in an arm-chair, with a blood-stain on 
his shirt-bosom,—and let us add to our hypothesis another 
man, issuing from the house, which he feels to be over-filled 
with the dead man’s presence,—and let us lastly imagine him 
fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed of a hurricane, by 
railroad! Now, sir, if the fugitive alight in some distant 
town, and find all the people babbling about that self-same 
dead man, whom he has fled so far to avoid the sight and 
thought of, will you not allow that his natural rights have 
been infringed? He has been deprived of his city of refuge, 
and, in my humble opinion, has suffered infinite wrong! ” 

“You are a strange man, sir!” said the old gentleman, 
bringing his gimlet-eye to a point on Clifford, as if deter¬ 
mined to bore right into him. “I can’t see through you! ” 

“No, I’ll be bound you can’t!” cried Clifford, laughing. 
“And yet, my dear sir, I am as transparent as the water of 
Maule’s well! But come, Hepzibah! We have flown far 
enough for once. Let us alight, as the birds do, and perch 
ourselves on the nearest twig, and consult wdhther we shall 
fly next!” 

Just then, as it happened, the train reached a solitary way- 
station. Taking advantage of the brief pause, Clifford left 
the car, and drew Hepzibah along with him. A moment 
afterwards, the train—with all the life of its interior, amid 
which Clifford had made himself so conspicuous an object— 
was gliding away in the distance, and rapidly lessening to a 
point, which, in another moment, vanished. The world had 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS 


275 


fled away from these two wanderers. They gazed drearily 
about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, 
black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with 
broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the 
edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square 
tower. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as 
venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping down¬ 
ward from the three-story peak, to within a man’s height 
of the ground. It seemed uninhabited. There were the 
relics of a wood-pile, indeed, near the door, but with grass 
sprouting up among the chips and scattered logs. The small 
rain-drops came down aslant; the wind was not turbulent, 
but sullen, and full of chilly moisture. 

Clifford shivered from head to foot. The wild effervescence 
of his mood—which had so readily supplied thoughts, fan¬ 
tasies, and a strange aptitude of words, and impelled him to 
talk from the mere necessity of giving vent to this bubbling- 
up gush of ideas—had entirely subsided. A powerful excite¬ 
ment had given him energy and vivacity. Its operation over, 
he forthwith began to sink. 

“You must take the lead now, Hepzibah!” murmured 
he, with a torpid and reluctant utterance. “Do with me 
as you will!” 

She knelt down upon the platform where they were stand¬ 
ing and lifted her clasped hands to the sky. The dull, gray 
weight of clouds made it invisible; but it was no hour for 
disbelief,—no juncture this to question that there was a sky 
above, and an Almighty Father looking from it! 

“0 God!”—ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah,—then 
paused a moment, to consider what her prayer should be,— 
“0 God,—our Father,—are we not thy children? Have 
mercy on us! ” 


XVIII 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 

Judge Pyncheon, while his two relatives have fled away 
with such ill-considered haste, still sits in the old parlor, 
keeping house, as the familiar phrase is, in the absence of 
its ordinary occupants. To him, and to the venerable House 
of the Seven Gables, does our story now betake itself, like 
an owl, bewildered in the daylight, and hastening back to 
his hollow tree. 

The Judge has not shifted his position for a long while 
now. He has not stirred hand or foot, nor withdrawn his 
eyes so much as a hair’s-breadth from their fixed gaze 
towards the corner of the room, since the footsteps of Hep- 
zibah and Clifford creaked along the passage, and the outer 
door was closed cautiously behind their exit. He holds 
his watch in his left hand, but clutched in such a manner 
that you cannot see the dial-plate. How profound a fit of 
meditation! Or, supposing him asleep, how infantile a 
quietude of conscience, and what wholesome order in the 
gastric region, are betokened by slumber so entirely undis¬ 
turbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dream-talk, 
trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any the slightest 
irregularity of breath! You must hold your own breath, 
to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all. It is quite 
inaudible. You hear the ticking of his watch; his breath 
you do not hear. A most refreshing slumber, doubtless! 
And yet, the Judge cannot be asleep. His eyes are open! 

276 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 


277 


A veteran politician, such as he, would never fall asleep 
with wide-open eyes, lest some enemy or mischief-maker, 
taking him thus at unawares, should peep through these 
windows into his consciousness, and make strange discoveries 
among the reminiscences, projects, hopes, apprehensions, 
weaknesses, and strong points, which he has heretofore 
shared with nobody. A cautious man is proverbially said 
to sleep with one eye open. That may be wisdom. But not 
with both; for this were heedlessness! No, no! Judge 
Pyncheon cannot be asleep. 

It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened with 
engagements,—and noted, too, for punctuality,—should 
linger thus in an old lonely mansion, which he has never 
seemed very fond of visiting. The oaken chair, to be sure, 
may tempt him with its roominess. It is, indeed, a spacious, 
and, allowing for the rude age that fashioned it, a moderately 
easy seat, with capacity enough, at all events, and offering 
no restraint to the Judge’s breadth of beam. A bigger man 
might find ample accommodation in it. His ancestor, now 
pictured upon the wall, with all his English beef about him, 
used hardly to present a front extending from elbow to 
elbow of this chair, or a base that would cover its whole 
cushion. But there are better chairs than this,—mahogany, 
black-walnut, rosewood, spring-seated and damask-cushioned, 
with varied slopes, and innumerable artifices to make them 
easy, and obviate the irksomeness of too tame an ease,—a 
score of such might be at Judge Pyncheon’s service. Yes! 
in a score of drawing-rooms he would be more than welcome. 
Mamma would advance to meet him, with outstretched hand; 
the virgin daughter, elderly as he has now got to be,—an old 
widower, as he smilingly describes himself,—would shake up 
the cushion for the Judge, and do her pretty little utmost 
to make him comfortable. For the Judge is a prosperous 
man. He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other people, 


278 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

and reasonably brighter than most others; or did so, at 
least, as he lay abed this morning, in an agreeable half¬ 
drowse, planning the business of the day, and speculating on 
the probabilities of the next fifteen years. With his firm 
health, and the little inroad that age has made upon him, 
fifteen years or twenty—yes, or perhaps five-and-twenty! — 
are no more than he may fairly call his own. Five-and- 
twenty years for the enjoyment of his real estate in town 
and country, his railroad, bank, and insurance shares, his 
United States stock,—his wealth, in short, however invested, 
now in possession, or soon to be acquired; together with the 
public honors that have fallen upon him, and the weightier 
ones that are yet to fall! It is good! It is excellent! It 
is enough! 

Still lingering in the old chair! If the Judge has a little 
time to throw away, why does not he visit the insurance 
office, as is his frequent custom, and sit awhile in one of 
their leather-cushioned arm-chairs, listening to the gossip 
of the day, and dropping some deeply designed chance- 
word, which will be certain to become the gossip of to¬ 
morrow! And have not the bank directors a meeting at 
which it was the Judge’s purpose to be present, and his 
office to preside? Indeed they have; and the hour is noted 
on a card, which is, or ought to be, in Judge Pyncheon’s 
right vest-pocket. Let him go thither, and loll at ease upon 
his money-bags! He has lounged long enough in the old 
chair! 

This was to have been such a busy day! In the first 
place, the interview with Clifford. Half an hour, by the 
Judge’s reckoning, was to suffice for that; it would probably 
be less, but—taking into consideration that Hepzibah was 
first to be dealt with, and that these women are apt to make 
many words where a few would do much better—it might be 
safest to allow half an hour. Half an hour? Why, Judge, it 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 


279 


is already two hours, by your own undeviatingly accurate 
chronometer! Glance your eye down at it and see! Ah! he 
will not give himself the trouble either to bend his head, or 
elevate his hand, so as to bring the faithful time-keeper 
within his range of vision! Time, all at once, appears to 
have become a matter of no moment with the Judge! 

And has he forgotten all the other items of his memoranda ? 
Clifford’s affair arranged, he was to meet a State Street 
broker, who has undertaken to procure a heavy percentage, 
and the best of paper, for a few loose thousand which the 
Judge happens to have by him, uninvested. The wrinkled 
note-shaver will have taken his railroad trip in vain. Half 
an hour later, in the street next to this, there was to be 
an auction of real estate, including a portion of the old 
Pyncheon property, originally belonging to Maule’s garden- 
ground. It has been alienated from the Pyncheons these 
four-score years; but the Judge had kept it in his eye, and 
had set his heart on reannexing it to the small demesne still 
left around the Seven Gables; and now, during this odd fit of 
oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen, and trans¬ 
ferred our ancient patrimony to some alien possessor! Pos¬ 
sibly, indeed, the sale may have been postponed till fairer 
weather. If so, will the Judge make it convenient to be 
present, and favor the auctioneer with his bid, on the proxi¬ 
mate occasion? 

The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving. 
The one heretofore his favorite stumbled, this very morn¬ 
ing, on the road to town, and must be at once discarded. 
Judge Pyncheon’s neck is too precious to be risked on such 
a contingency as a stumbling steed. Should all the above 
business be seasonably got through with, he might attend 
the meeting of a charitable society; the very name of which, 
however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is quite for¬ 
gotten; so that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, and 


280 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


no great harm done. And if he have time, amid the press of 
more urgent matters, he must take measures for the renewal 
of Mrs. Pyncheon’s tombstone, which, the sexton tells him, 
has fallen on its marble face, and is cracked quite in twain. 
She was a praiseworthy woman enough, thinks the Judge, 
in spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she was so 
oozy with, and her foolish behavior about the coffee; and 
as she took her departure so seasonably, he will not grudge 
the second tombstone. It is better, at least, than if she had 
never needed any! The next item on his list was to give 
orders for some fruit-trees, of a rare variety, to be deliverable 
at his country-seat, in the ensuing autumn. Yes, buy them, 
by all means; and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, 
Judge Pyncheon! After this comes something more important. 
A committee of his political party has besought him for a 
hundred or two of dollars, in addition to his previous dis¬ 
bursements, towards carrying on the fall campaign. The 
Judge is a patriot; the fate of the country is staked on the 
November election; and besides, as will be shadowed forth 
in another paragraph, he has no trifling stake of his own in 
the same great game. He will do what the committee asks; 
nay, he will be liberal beyond their expectations; they shall 
have a check for five hundred dollars, and more anon, if it 
be needed. What next? A decayed widow, whose husband 
was Judge Pyncheon’s early friend, has laid her case of 
destitution before him, in a very moving letter. She and her 
fair daughter have scarcely bread to eat. He partly intends 
to call on her, to-day,—perhaps so—perhaps not,—accord¬ 
ingly as he may happen to have leisure, and a small bank-note. 

Another business, which, however, he puts no great weight 
on (it is well, you know, to be heedful, but not over-anxious, 
as respects one’s personal health),—another business, then, 
was to consult his family physician. About what, for Heaven’s 
sake? Why, it is rather difficult to describe the symptoms. 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 


281 


A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of brain, was it?—or 
a disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or bubbling, 
in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists say?—or was 
it a pretty severe throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather 
creditable to him than otherwise, as showing that the organ 
had not been left out of the Judge’s physical contrivance? 
No matter what it was. The doctor, probably, would smile 
at the statement of such trifles to his professional ear; the 
Judge would smile in his turn; and meeting one another’s 
eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh together! But a fig 
for medical advice! The Judge will never need it. 

Pray, pray, Judge Pyncheon, look at your watch, now! 
What—not a glance! It is within ten minutes of the dinner- 
hour! It surely cannot have slipped your memory that the 
dinner of to-day is to be the most important, in its con¬ 
sequences, of all the dinners you ever ate. Yes, precisely 
the most important; although, in the course of your some¬ 
what eminent career, you have been placed high towards 
the head of the table, at splendid banquets, and have poured 
out your festive eloquence to ears yet echoing with Web¬ 
ster’s mighty organ-tones. No public dinner this, however. 
It is merely a gathering of some dozen or so of friends from 
several districts of the State; men of distinguished character 
and influence, assembling, almost casually, at the house of 
a common friend, likewise distinguished, who will make them 
welcome to a little better than his ordinary fare. Nothing 
in the way of French cookery, but an excellent dinner never¬ 
theless. Real turtle, we understand, and salmon, tautog, 
canvas-backs, pig, English mutton, good roast-beef, or 
dainties of that serious kind, fit for substantial country gentle¬ 
men, as these honorable persons mostly are. The delicacies of 
the season, in short, and flavored by a brand of old Madeira 
which has been the pride of many seasons. It is the Juno 
brand; a glorious wine, fragrant, and full of gentle might; 


282 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

a bottled-up happiness, put by for use; a golden liquid, 
worth more than liquid gold; so rare and admirable, that 
veteran wine-bibbers count it among their epochs to have 
tasted it! It drives away the heart-ache, and substitutes no 
head-ache! Could the Judge but quaff a glass, it might 
enable him to shake off the unaccountable lethargy which 
(for the ten intervening minutes, and five to boot, are 
already past) has made him such a laggard at this momentous 
dinner. It would all but revive a dead man! Would you 
like to sip it now, Judge Pyncheon? 

Alas, this dinner! Have you really forgotten its true 
object? Then let us whisper it, that you may start at once 
out of the oaken chair, which really seems to be enchanted, 
like the one in Comus, or that in which Moll Pitcher im¬ 
prisoned your own grandfather. But ambition is a talisman 
more powerful than witchcraft. Start up, then, and, hurry¬ 
ing through the streets, burst in upon the company, that 
they may begin before the fish is spoiled! They wait for 
you; and it is little for your interest that they should wait. 
These gentlemen—need you be told it? have assembled, 
not without purpose, from every quarter of the State. They 
are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled to 
adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the 
people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its 
own rulers. The popular voice, at the next gubernatorial 
election, though loud as thunder, will be really but an echo 
of what these gentlemen shall speak, under their breath, at 
your friend’s festive board. They meet to decide upon their 
candidate. This little knot of subtle schemers will control 
the convention, and, through it, dictate to the party. And 
what worthier candidate,—more wise and learned, more 
noted for philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, 
tried oftener by public trusts, more spotless in private char¬ 
acter, with a larger stake in the common welfare, and deeper 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 


283 


grounded, by hereditary descent, in the faith and practice 
of the Puritans,—what man can be presented for the suffrage 
of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to the 
chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here before us? 

Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for which 
you have toiled, and fought, and climbed, and crept, is ready 
for your grasp! Be present at this dinner!—drink a glass 
or two of that noble wine!—make your pledges in as low a 
whisper as you will!—and you rise up from table virtually 
governor of the glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of 
Massachusetts! 

And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a cer¬ 
tainty like this ? It has been the grand purpose of half your 
lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs little more than 
to signify your acceptance, why do you sit so lumpishly in 
your great-great-grandfather’s oaken chair, as if preferring 
it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King Log; 
but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will 
hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy. 

Well! it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, 
tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, 
roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with 
lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over with cold fat. 
The Judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved 
wonders with his knife and fork. It was he, you know, of 
whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like appetite, 
that his Creator made him a great animal, but that the dinner- 
hour made him a great beast. Persons of his large sensual 
endowments must claim indulgence, at their feeding-time. 
But, for once, the Judge is entirely too late for dinner! Too 
late, we fear, even to join the party at their wine! The 
guests are warm and merry; they have given up the Judge; 
and, concluding that the Free-Soilers have him, they will 
fix upon another candidate. Were our friend now to stalk 


284 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


in among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and 
stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their 
cheer. Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pyncheon, gen¬ 
erally so scrupulous in his attire, to show himself at a dinner- 
table with that crimson stain upon his shirt-bosom. By the 
by, how came it there ? It is an ugly sight, at any rate; and 
the wisest way for the Judge is to button his coat closely 
over his breast, and, taking his horse and chaise from the 
livery-stable, to make all speed to his own house. There, 
after a glass of brandy and water, and a mutton-chop, a 
beefsteak, a broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinner 
and supper all in one, he had better spend the evening by 
the fireside. He must toast his slippers a long while, in order 
to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this vile old house 
has sent curdling through his veins. 

Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon, up! You have lost a 
day. But to-morrow will be here anon. Will you rise, be¬ 
times, and make the most of it ? To-morrow! To-morrow! 
To-morrow! We, that are alive, may rise betimes to-mor¬ 
row. As for him that has died to-day, his morrow will be 
the resurrection morn. 

Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the 
corners of the room. The shadows of the tall furniture grow 
deeper, and at first become more definite; then, spreading 
wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in the dark 
gray tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly over 
the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in 
the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from with¬ 
out; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own 
inevitable time, will possess itself of everything. The Judge’s 
face, indeed, rigid, and singularly white, refuses to melt into 
this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the light. 
It is as if another double-handful of darkness had been scat¬ 
tered through the air. Now it is no longer gray, but sable. 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 


285 


There is still a faint appearance at the window; neither a 
glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer,—any phrase of light would 
express something far brighter than this doubtful perception, 
or sense, rather, that there is a window there. Has it yet 
vanished? No!—yes!—not quite! And there is still the 
swarthy whiteness,—we shall venture to marry these ill- 
agreeing words,—the swarthy whiteness of Judge Pyncheon’s 
face. The features are all gone: there is only the paleness 
of them left. And how looks it now? There is no window! 
There is no face! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has 
annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled 
away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the 
gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring 
about, in quest of what was once a world! 

Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one. 
It is the ticking of the Judge’s watch, which, ever since Hep- 
zibah left the room in search of Clifford, he has been holding 
in his hand. Be the cause what it may, this little, quiet, 
never-ceasing throb of Time’s pulse, repeating its small 
strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Pyncheon’s 
motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not 
find in any other accompaniment of the scene. 

But, listen! That puff of the breeze was louder; it had 
a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned 
itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable sympathy, 
for five days past. The wind has veered about! It now 
comes boisterously from the northwest, and, taking hold of 
the aged framework of the Seven Gables, gives it a shake, 
like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist. 
Another and another sturdy tussle with the blast! The old 
house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat 
unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat (the big flue, we 
mean, of its wide chimney), partly in complaint at the rude 
wind, but rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile 


286 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a bluster 
roars behind the fire-board. A door has slammed above 
stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is 
driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived, be¬ 
forehand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old 
timber mansions, and how haunted with the strangest noises, 
which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and sob, and 
shriek,—and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy but pon¬ 
derous, in some distant chamber,—and to tread along the 
entries as with stately footsteps, and rustle up and down 
the staircase, as with silks miraculously stiff,—whenever 
the gale catches the house with a window open, and gets 
fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant spirit 
here! It is too awful! This clamor of the wind through 
the lonely house; the Judge’s quietude, as he sits invisible; 
and that pertinacious ticking of his watch! 

As regards Judge Pyncheon’s invisibility, however, that 
matter will soon be remedied. The northwest wind has 
swept the sky clear. The window is distinctly seen. Through 
its panes, moreover, we dimly catch the sweep of the dark, 
clustering foliage, outside, fluttering with a constant irregu¬ 
larity of movement, and letting in a peep of starlight, now 
here, now there. Oftener than any other object, these 
glimpses illuminate the Judge’s face. But here comes more 
effectual light. Observe that silvery dance upon the upper 
branches of the pear-tree, and now a little lower, and now 
on the whole mass of boughs, while, through their shifting 
intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant into the room. They 
play over the Judge’s figure and show that he has not stirred 
throughout the hours of darkness. They follow the shadows, 
in changeful sport, across his unchanging features. They 
gleam upon his watch. His grasp conceals the dial-plate; 
but we know that the faithful hands have met; for one of 
the city clocks tells midnight. 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 


287 


A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pyncheon, 
cares no more for twelve o’clock at night than for the cor¬ 
responding hour of noon. However just the parallel drawn, 
in some of the preceding pages, between his Puritan ancestor 
and himself, it fails in this point. The Pyncheon of two 
centuries ago, in common with most of his contemporaries, 
professed his full belief in spiritual ministrations, although 
reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character. The Pyn¬ 
cheon of to-night, who sits in yonder arm-chair, believes in 
no such nonsense. Such, at least, was his creed, some few 
hours since. His hair will not bristle, therefore, at the 
stories which—in times when chimney-corners had benches 
in them, where old people sat poking into the ashes of the 
past, and raking out traditions like live coals—used to be 
told about this very room of his ancestral house. In fact, 
these tales are too absurd to bristle even childhood’s hair. 
What sense, meaning, or moral, for example, such as even 
ghost-stories should be susceptible of, can be traced in the 
ridiculous legend, that, at midnight, all the dead Pyncheons 
are bound to assemble in this parlor? And, pray, for what? 
Why, to see whether the portrait of their ancestor still keeps 
its place upon the wall, in compliance with his testamentary 
directions! Is it worth while to come out of their graves 
for that? 

We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea. 
Ghost-stories are hardly to be treated seriously, any longer. 
The family-party of the defunct Pyncheons, we presume, 
goes off in this wise. 

First comes the ancestor himself, in his black cloak, 
steeple-hat, and trunk-breeches, girt about the waist with 
a leathern belt, in which hangs his steel-hilted sword; he 
has a long staff in his hand, such as gentlemen in advanced 
life used to carry, as much for the dignity of the thing as 
for the support to be derived from it. He looks up at the 


288 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


portrait ; a thing of no substance, gazing at its own painted 
image! All is safe. The picture is still there. The purpose 
of his brain has been kept sacred thus long after the man 
himself has sprouted up in graveyard grass. See! he lifts 
his ineffectual hand, and tries the frame. All safe! But 
is that a smile?—is it not, rather, a frown of deadly import, 
that darkens over the shadow of his features? The stout 
Colonel is dissatisfied! So decided is his look of discontent 
as to impart additional distinctness to his features; through 
which, nevertheless, the moonlight passes, and flickers on 
the wall beyond. Something has strangely vexed the an¬ 
cestor! With a grim shake of the head, he turns away. 
Here come other Pyncheons, the whole tribe, in their half 
a dozen generations, jostling and elbowing one another, to 
reach the picture. We behold aged men and grandames, a 
clergyman with the Puritanic stiffness still in his garb and 
mien, and a red-coated officer of the old French war; and 
there comes the shop-keeping Pyncheon of a century ago, 
with the ruffles turned back from his wrists; and there the 
periwigged and brocaded gentleman of the artist’s legend, 
with the beautiful and pensive Alice, who brings no pride 
out of her virgin grave. All try the picture-frame. What 
do these ghostly people seek ? A mother lifts her child, that 
his little hands may touch it! There is evidently a mystery 
about the picture, that perplexes these poor Pyncheons 
when they ought to be at rest. In a corner, meanwhile, 
stands the figure of an elderly man, in a leather jerkin and 
breeches, with a carpenter’s rule sticking out of his side 
pocket; he points his finger at the bearded Colonel and his 
descendants, nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting 
into obstreperous, though inaudible laughter. 

Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the 
power of restraint and guidance. We distinguish an un¬ 
looked-for figure in our visionary scene. Among those an- 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 


289 


cestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very 
fashion of to-day: he wears a dark frock-coat, almost desti¬ 
tute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots of patent leather, 
and has a finely wrought gold chain across his breast, and 
a little silver-headed whalebone stick in his hand. Were 
we to meet this figure at noonday, we should greet him as 
young Jaffrey Pyncheon, the Judge’s only surviving child, 
who has been spending the last two years in foreign travel. 
If still in life, how comes his shadow hither? If dead, what 
a misfortune! The old Pyncheon property, together with 
the great estate acquired by the young man’s father, would 
devolve on whom? On poor, foolish Clifford, gaunt Hep- 
zibah, and rustic little Phoebe! But another and a greater 
marvel greets us! Can we believe our eyes? A stout, 
elderly gentleman has made his appearance; he has an aspect 
of eminent respectability, wears a black coat and pantaloons, 
of roomy width, and might be pronounced scrupulously neat 
in his attire, but for a broad crimson stain across his snowy 
neckcloth and down his shirt-bosom. Is it the Judge, or no? 
How can it be Judge Pyncheon? We discern his figure, as 
plainly as the flickering moonbeams can show us anything, 
still seated in the oaken chair! Be the apparition whose it 
may, it advances to the picture, seems to seize the frame, 
tries to peep behind it, and turns away, with a frown as 
black as the ancestral one. 

The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be 
considered as forming an actual portion of our story. We 
were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver 
of the moonbeams; they dance hand-in-hand with shadows, 
and are reflected in the looking-glass, which, you are aware, 
is always a kind of window or doorway into the spiritual 
world. We needed relief, moreover, from our too long and 
exclusive contemplation of that figure in the chair. This 
wild wind, too, has tossed our thoughts into strange con- 


i 


290 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


fusion, but without tearing them away from their one deter¬ 
mined center. Yonder leaden Judge sits immovably upon 
our soul. Will he never stir again? We shall go mad unless 
he stirs! You may the better estimate his quietude by the 
fearlessness of a little mouse, which sits on its hind legs, in 
a streak of moonlight, close by Judge Pyncheon’s foot, and 
seems to meditate a journey of exploration over this great 
black bulk. Ha! what has startled the nimble little mouse? 
It is the visage of grimalkin, outside of the window, where he 
appears to have posted himself for a deliberate watch. 
This grimalkin has a very ugly look. Is it a cat watching 
for a mouse, or the devil for a human soul? Would we could 
scare him from the window! 

Thank Heaven, the night is well-nigh past! The moon¬ 
beams have no longer so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so 
strongly with the blackness of the shadows among which 
they fall. They are paler, now; the shadows look gray, not 
black. The boisterous wind is hushed. What is the hour? 
Ah! the watch has at last ceased to tick; for the Judge’s 
forgetful fingers neglected to wind it up, as usual, at ten 
o’clock, being half an hour or so before his ordinary bed¬ 
time,—and it has run down, for the first time in five years. 
But the great world-clock of Time still keeps its beat. The 
dreary night—for, oh, how dreary seems its haunted waste, 
behind us!—gives place to a fresh, transparent cloudless 
morn. Blessed, blessed radiance! The daybeam—even what 
little of it finds its way into this always dusky parlor— 
seems part of the universal benediction, annulling evil, and 
rendering all goodness possible, and happiness attainable. 
Will Judge Pyncheon now rise up from his chair? Will he 
go forth, and receive the early sunbeams on his brow ? Will 
he begin this new day,—which God has smiled upon, and 
blessed, and given to mankind,—will he begin it with better 
purposes than the many that have been spent amiss? Or 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON 291 

are all the deep-laid schemes of yesterday, as stubborn in 
his heart, and as busy in his brain, as ever? 

In this latter case, there is much to do. Will the Judge 
still insist with Hepzibah on the interview with Clifford? 
Will he buy a safe, elderly gentleman’s horse? Will he per¬ 
suade the purchaser of the old Pyncheon property to relin¬ 
quish the bargain, in his favor? Will he see his family 
physician, and obtain a medicine that shall preserve him, 
to be an honor and blessing to his race, until the utmost 
term of patriarchal longevity? Will Judge Pyncheon, above 
all, make due apologies to that company of honorable friends, 
and satisfy them that his absence from the festive board 
was unavoidable, and so fully retrieve himself in their good 
opinion that he shall yet be the Governor of Massachusetts ? 
And all these great purposes accomplished, will he walk the 
streets again, with that dog-day smile of elaborate benevo¬ 
lence, sultry enough to tempt flies to come and buzz in it? 
Or will he, after the tomb-like seclusion of the past day 
and night, go forth a humbled and repentant man, sorrowful, 
gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from worldly honor, hardly 
daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow-man, and to 
do him what good he may ? Will he bear about with him,— 
no odious grin of feigned benignity, insolent in its pretence, 
and loathsome in its falsehood,—but the tender sadness of 
a contrite heart, broken, at last, beneath its own weight 
of sin ? For it is our belief, whatever show of honor he may 
have piled upon it, that there was heavy sin at the base 
of this man’s being. 

Rise up, Judge Pyncheon! The morning sunshine glim¬ 
mers through the foliage, and, beautiful and holy as it is, 
shuns not to kindle up your face. Rise up, thou subtle, 
worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy choice 
whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted, and 
hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy nature, though 


292 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

they bring the life-blood with them! The Avenger is upon 
thee! Rise up, before it be too late! 

What! Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No, not 
a jot! And there we see a fly,—one of your common house¬ 
flies, such as are always buzzing on the window-pane,—which 
has smelt out Governor Pyncheon, and alights, now on his 
forehead, now on his chin, and now, Heaven help us! is 
creeping over the bridge of his nose, towards the would- 
be chief-magistrate’s wide-open eyes! Canst thou not brush 
the fly away ? Art thou too sluggish ? Thou man, that hadst 
so many busy projects yesterday! Art thou too weak, that 
wast so powerful? Not brush away a fly? Nay, then, we 
give thee up! 

And hark! the shop-bell rings. After hours like these 
latter ones, through which we have borne our heavy tale, it 
is good to be made sensible that there is a living world, and 
that even this old, lonely mansion retains some manner of 
connection with it. We breathe more freely, emerging from 
Judge Pyncheon’s presence into the street before the Seven 
Gables. 


XIX 


Alice's posies 

Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest 
person stirring in the neighborhood the day after the storm. 

Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven Gables, 
was a far pleasanter scene than a by-lane, confined by 
shabby fences, and bordered with wooden dwellings of the 
meaner class, could reasonably be expected to present. 
Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the five un¬ 
kindly days which had preceded it. It would have been 
enough to live for, merely to look up at the wide benedic¬ 
tion of the sky, or as much of it as was visible between the 
houses, genial once more with sunshine. Every object was 
agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the breadth, or exam¬ 
ined more minutely. Such, for example, were the well- 
washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the sky- 
reflecting pools in the center of the street; and the grass, now 
freshly verdant, that crept along the base of the fences, 
on the other side of which, if one peeped over, was seen the 
multifarious growth of gardens. Vegetable productions, of 
whatever kind, seemed more than negatively happy, in the 
juicy warmth and abundance of their life. The Pyncheon 
Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and 
full of the morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, 
which lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thousand 
leafy tongues a-whispering all at once. This aged tree ap¬ 
peared to have suffered nothing from the gale. It had kept 

293 


294 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of leaves; 
and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, 
that, by the earlier change with which the elm-tree some¬ 
times prophesies the autumn, had been transmuted to bright 
gold. It was like the golden branch that gained ^Eneas and 
the Sibyl admittance into Hades. 

This one mystic branch hung down before the main en¬ 
trance of the Seven Gables, so nigh the ground that any 
passer-by might have stood on tip-toe and plucked it off. 
Presented at the door, it would have been a symbol of his 
right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the secrets 
of the house. So little faith is due to external appearance, 
that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable 
edifice, conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous 
and happy one, and such as would be delightful for a fire¬ 
side tale. Its windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting 
sunlight. The lines and tufts of green moss, here and there, 
seemed pledges of familiarity and sisterhood with Nature; 
as if this human dwelling-place, being of such old date, had 
established its prescriptive title among primeval oaks and 
whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, 
have acquired a gracious right to be. A person of imaginative 
temperament, while passing by the house, would turn, once 
and again, and peruse it well; its many peaks, consenting 
together in the clustered chimney; the deep projection over 
its basement-story; the arched window, imparting a look, 
if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the broken 
portal over which it opened; the luxuriance of gigantic bur¬ 
docks, near the threshold; he would note all these charac¬ 
teristics, and be conscious of something deeper than he saw. 
He would conceive the mansion to have been the residence 
of the stubborn old Puritan, Integrity, who, dying in some 
forgotten generation, had left a blessing in all its rooms and 
chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in the religion, 


ALICE’S POSIES 


295 


honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and solid 
happiness, of his descendants, to this day. 

One object, above all others, would take root in the 
imaginative observer’s memory. It was the great tuft of 
flowers,—weeds, you would have called them, only a week 
ago,—the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers, in the angle be¬ 
tween the two front gables. The old people used to give 
them the name of Alice’s Posies, in remembrance of fair 
Alice Pyncheon, who was believed to have brought their 
seeds from Italy. They were flaunting in rich beauty and 
full bloom to-day, and seemed, as it were, a mystic expression 
that something within the house was consummated. 

It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Venner made 
his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow along 
the street. He was going his matutinal rounds to collect 
cabbage-leaves, turnip tops, potato-skins, and the miscel¬ 
laneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the thrifty house¬ 
wives of the neighborhood were accustomed to put aside, 
as fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Venner’s pig was fed entirely, 
and kept in prime order, on these eleemosynary contribu¬ 
tions ; insomuch that the patched philosopher used to promise 
that, before retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of 
the portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake 
of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped to fatten. 
Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon’s housekeeping had so greatly im¬ 
proved, since Clifford became a member of the family, that 
her share of the banquet would have been no lean one; 
and Uncle Venner, accordingly, was a good deal disappointed 
not to find the large earthen pan, full of fragmentary eatables, 
that ordinarily awaited his coming at the back doorstep of the 
Seven Gables. 

“I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,” said 
the patriarch to himself. “She must have had a dinner yes¬ 
terday,—no question of that! She always has one, nowa- 


296 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


days. So where’s the pot-liquor and potato-skins, I ask? 
Shall I knock, and see if she’s stirring yet? No, no,—’t won’t 
do! If little Phoebe was about the house, I should not mind 
knocking; but Miss Hepzibah, likely as not, would scowl 
down at me out of the window, and look cross, even if she 
felt pleasantly. So, I’ll come back at noon.” 

With these reflections, the old man was shutting the gate 
of the little back-yard. Creaking on its hinges, however, 
like every other gate and door about the premises, the sound 
reached the ears of the occupant of the northern gable, one 
of the windows of which had a side-view towards the gate. 

“Good morning, Uncle Venner!” said the daguerreotypist, 
leaning out of the window. “Do you hear nobody stirring ?” 

“Not a soul,” said the man of patches. “But that’s no 
wonder. ’Tis barely half an hour past sunrise, yet. But 
I’m really glad to see you, Mr. Holgrave! There’s a strange, 
lonesome look about this side of the house; so that my heart 
misgave me, somehow or other, and I felt as if there was no¬ 
body alive in it. The front of the house looks a good deal 
cheerier; and Alice’s Posies are blooming there beautifully; 
and if I were a young man, Mr. Holgrave, my sweetheart 
should have one of those flowers in her bosom, though I risked 
my neck climbing for it! Well, and did the wind keep you 
awake last night?” 

“It did, indeed!” answered the artist, smiling. “If I were 
a believer in ghosts,—and I don’t quite know whether I am 
or not,—I should have concluded that all the old Pyncheons 
were running riot in the lower rooms, especially in Miss 
Hepzibah’s part of the house. But it is very quiet now.” 

“Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep herself, after 
being disturbed, all night, with the racket,” said Uncle 
Venner. “But it would be odd, now, wouldn’t it, if the 
Judge had taken both his cousins into the country along 
with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday.” 


ALICE’S POSIES 


297 


“At what hour?” inquired Holgrave. 

“Oh, along in the forenoon,” said the old man. “Well, 
well! I must go my rounds, and so must my wheelbarrow. 
But I’ll be back here at dinner-time; for my pig likes a 
dinner as well as a breakfast. No meal-time, and no sort of 
victuals, ever seems to come amiss to my pig. Good morning 
to you! And, Mr. Holgrave, if I were a young man, like 
you, I’d get one of Alice’s Posies, and keep it in water till 
Phoebe comes back.” 

“I have heard,” said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in his 
head, “that the water of Maule’s well suits those flowers 
best.” 

Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner went on 
his way. For half an hour longer, nothing disturbed the 
repose of the Seven Gables; nor was there any visitor, except 
a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the front doorstep, threw 
down one of his newspapers; for Hepzibah, of late, had 
regularly taken it in. After a while, there came a fat woman, 
making prodigious speed, and stumbling as she ran up the 
steps of the shop-door. Her face glowed with fire-heat, 
and, it being a pretty warm morning, she bubbled and hissed, 
as it were, as if all a-fry with chimney-warmth, and summer- 
warmth, and the warmth of her own corpulent velocity. She 
tried the shop-door; it was fast. She tried it again, with so 
angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily back at her. 

“The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!” muttered the 
irascible housewife. “Think of her pretending to set up a 
cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon! These are what 
she calls gentlefolk’s airs, I suppose! But I’ll either start 
her ladyship, or break the door down! ” 

She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful 
little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, making its 
remonstrances heard,—not, indeed, by the ears for which they 
were intended,—but by a good lady on the opposite side of 




298 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


the street. She opened her window, and addressed the im¬ 
patient applicant. 

“You’ll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.” 

“But I must and will find somebody here!” cried Mrs. 
Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell. “I want a 
half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate flounders, for Mr. 
Gubbins’ breakfast; and, lady or not, Old Maid Pyncheon 
shall get up and serve me with it!” 

“But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!” responded the lady 
opposite. “She, and her brother too, have both gone to 
their cousin, Judge Pyncheon’s, at his country-seat. There’s 
not a soul in the house, but that young daguerreotype-man 
that sleeps in the north gable. I saw old Hepzibah and Clif¬ 
ford go away yesterday; and a queer couple of ducks they 
were, paddling through the mud-puddles! They’re gone, 
I’ll assure you.” 

“And how do you know they’re gone to the Judge’s?” 
asked Mrs. Gubbins. “He’s a rich man; and there’s been a 
quarrel between him and Hepzibah, this many a day, because 
he won’t give her a living. That’s the main reason of her 
setting up a cent-shop.” 

“I know that well enough,” said the neighbor. “But 
they’re gone,—that’s one thing certain. And who but a 
blood relation, that couldn’t help himself, I ask you, would 
take in that awful-tempered old maid, and that dreadful 
Clifford? That’s it, you may be sure.” 

Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over with 
hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah. For another half- 
hour, or, perhaps, considerably more, there was almost as 
much quiet on the outside of the house as within. The elm, 
however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive 
to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible; a swarm of 
insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow, and be¬ 
came specks of light whenever they darted into the sunshine; 


ALICE’S POSIES 


299 


a locust sang, once or twice, in some inscrutable seclusion 
of the tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage of pale 
gold, came and hovered about Alice’s Posies. 

At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up 
the street, on his way to school; and happening, for the 
first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of a cent, he 
could by no means get past the shop-door of the Seven 
Gables. But it would not open. Again and again, however, 
and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable per¬ 
tinacity of a child intent upon some object important to 
itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance. He had, 
doubtless, set his heart upon an elephant; or, possibly, with 
Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile. In response to his more 
violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then, a moderate 
tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any exertion 
of the little fellow’s childish and tiptoe strength. Holding 
by the door-handle, he peeped through a crevice of the cur¬ 
tain, and saw that the inner door, communicating with the 
passage towards the parlor, was closed. 

“Miss Pyncheon!” screamed the child, rapping on the 
window-pane, “I want an elephant!” 

There being no answer to several repetitions of the sum¬ 
mons, Ned began to grow impatient; and his little pot of 
passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone, with a 
.naughty purpose to fling it through the window; at the same 
time blubbering and sputtering with wrath. A man—one 
of two who happened to be passing by—caught the 
urchin’s arm. 

“What’s the trouble, old gentleman?” he asked. 

“I want old Hepzibah, or Phoebe, or any of them!” 
answered Ned, sobbing. “They won’t open the door; and 
I can’t get my elephant! ” 

“Go to school, you little scamp! ” said the man. “There’s 
another cent-shop round the corner. ’Tis very strange, 


300 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

Dixey,” added he to his companion, “what’s become of all 
these Pyncheons! Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me 
Judge Pyncheon put his horse up yesterday, to stand till 
after dinner, and has not taken him away yet. And one of 
the Judge’s hired men has been in, this morning, to make 
inquiry about him. He’s a kind of person, they say, that 
seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o’ nights.” 

“Oh, he’ll turn up safe enough!” said Dixey. “And as 
for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run 
in debt, and gone off from her creditors. I foretold, you re¬ 
member, the first morning she set up shop, that her devilish 
scowl would frighten away customers. They couldn’t 
stand it!” 

“I never thought she’d make it go,” remarked his friend. 
“This business of cent-shops is overdone among the women¬ 
folks. My wife tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!” 

“Poor business!” said Dixey, shaking his head. “Poor 
business! ” 

In the course of the morning, there were various other 
attempts to open a communication with the supposed in¬ 
habitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion. The man 
of root-beer came, in his neatly painted wagon, with a 
couple of dozen full bottles, to be exchanged for empty ones; 
the baker, with a lot of crackers which Hepzibah had 
ordered for her retail custom; the butcher, with a nice titbit 
which he fancied she would be eager to secure for Clifford. 
Had any observer of these proceedings been aware of the 
fearful secret hidden within the house, it would have affected 
him with a singular shape and modification of horror, to 
see the current of human life making this small eddy here¬ 
abouts,—whirling sticks, straws, and all such trifles, round 
and round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse 
lay unseen! 

The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread 


ALICE’S POSIES 


301 


of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that he tried every 
accessible door of the Seven Gables, and at length came 
round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found ad¬ 
mittance. 

“It’s a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump 
at it, ,? said he to himself. “She can’t be gone away! In 
fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Pyncheon 
Street, I’ve never known her to be away from home; though 
often enough, to be sure, a man might knock all day without 
bringing her to the door. But that was when she’d only 
herself to provide for.” » 

Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where, 
only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite 
had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed, 
as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open. 
However it might have happ'ened, it was the fact. Through 
the passage-way there was a dark vista into the lighter but 
still obscure interior of the parlor. It appeared to the 
butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to 
be the stalwart legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man sitting 
in a large oaken chair, the back of which concealed all the 
remainder of his figure. This contemptuous tranquillity on 
the part of an occupant of the house, in response to the 
butcher’s indefatigable efforts to attract notice, so piqued the 
man of flesh that he determined to withdraw. 

“So,” thought he, “there sits Old Maid Pyncheon’s bloody 
brother, while I’ve been giving myself all this trouble! 
Why, if a hog hadn’t more manners, I’d stick him! I call 
it demeaning a man’s business to trade with such people; 
and from this time forth, if they want a sausage or an ounce 
of liver, they shall run after the cart for it!” 

He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove off 
in a pet. 

Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music 


302 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

turning the corner, and approaching down the street, with 
several intervals of silence, and then a renewed and nearer 
outbreak of brisk melody. A mob of children was seen mov¬ 
ing onward, or stopping, in unison with the sound, which 
appeared to proceed from the center of the throng; so that 
they were loosely bound together by slender strains of 
harmony, and drawn along captive; with ever and anon 
an accession of some little fellow in an apron and straw-hat, 
capering forth from door or gateway. Arriving under the 
shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, it proved to be the Italian 
•boy, who, with his monkey and show of puppets, had once 
before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window. 
The pleasant face of Phoebe—and doubtless, too, the liberal 
recompense which she had flung him—still dwelt in his 
remembrance. His expressive features kindled up, as he 
recognized the spot where this t’rifling incident of his erratic 
life had chanced. He entered the neglected yard (now wilder 
than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock),, sta¬ 
tioned himself on the doorstep of the main entrance, and, 
opening his show-box, began to play. Each, individual of the 
automatic community forthwith set to work, according to his 
or her proper vocation: the monkey, taking off his Highland 
bonnet, bowed and scraped to the by-standers most obse¬ 
quiously, with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray cent; 
and the young foreigner himself, as he turned the crank of 
his machine, glanced upward to the arched window, expectant 
of a presence that would make his music the livelier and 
sweeter. 

The throng of children stood near; some on the sidewalk; 
some within the yard; two or three establishing themselves 
on the very doorstep; and one squatting on the threshold. 
Meanwhile, the locust kept singing in the great old 
Pyncheon Elm. 

“I don’t hear anybody in the house,” said one of the 


ALICE’S POSIES 303 

children to another. “The monkey won’t pick up any¬ 
thing here.” 

“There is somebody at home,” affirmed the urchin on 
the threshold. “I heard a step!” 

Still the young Italian’s eye turned sidelong upward; and 
it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though slight 
and almost playful, emotion communicated a juicier sweet¬ 
ness to the dry, mechanical process of his minstrelsy. These 
wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kindness— 
be it no more than a smile, or a word itself not understood, 
but only a warmth in it—which befalls them on the roadside 
of life. They remember these things, because they are the 
little enchantments which, for the instant,—for the space 
that reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble,—build up a home 
about them. Therefore, the Italian boy would not be dis¬ 
couraged by the heavy silence with which the old house 
seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument. 
He persisted in his melodious appeals; he still looked up¬ 
ward, trusting that his dark, alien countenance would soon 
be brightened by Phoebe’s sunny aspect. 

Neither could he be willing to depart without again behold¬ 
ing Clifford, whose sensibility, like Phoebe’s smile, had talked 
a kind of heart’s language to the foreigner. He repeated 
all his music over and over again, until his auditors were 
getting weary. So were the little wooden people in his 
show-box, and the monkey most of all. There was no 
response, save the singing of the locust. 

“No children live in this house,” said a school-boy, at 
last. “Nobody lives here but an old maid and an 
old man. You’ll get nothing here! Why don’t you go 
along?” 

“You fool, you, why do you tell him?” whispered a shrewd 
little Yankee, caring nothing for the music, but a good deal 
for the cheap rate at which it was had. “Let him play as 


304 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


long as he likes! If there’s nobody to pay him, that’s his 
own lookout!” 

Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of 
melodies. To the common observer—who could understand 
nothing of the case, except the music and the sunshine on 
the hither side of the door—it might have been amusing to 
watch the pertinacity of the street-performer. Will he suc¬ 
ceed'at last? Will that stubborn door be suddenly flung 
open? Will a group of joyous children, the young ones of 
the house, come dancing, shouting, laughing, into the open 
air, and cluster around the show-box, looking with eager 
merriment at the puppets, and tossing each a copper for long¬ 
tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up? 

But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven Gables 
as well as its exterior face, there is a ghastly effect in this 
repetition of light popular tunes at its doorstep. It would 
be an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Pyncheon (who would 
not have cared a fig for Paganini’s fiddle in his most har¬ 
monious mood) should make his appearance at the door, 
with a bloody shirt-bosom, and a grim frown on his swarth- 
ily white visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away! 
Was ever before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes, 
where nobody was in the cue to dance? Yes, very often. 
This contrast, or intermingling of tragedy with mirth, hap¬ 
pens daily, hourly, momently. The gloomy and desolate 
old house, deserted of life, and with awful Death sitting 
sternly in its solitude, was the emblem of many a human 
heart, which, nevertheless, is compelled to hear the thrill 
and echo of the world’s gayety around it. 

Before the conclusion of the Italian’s performance, a 
couple of men happened to be passing, on their way to 
dinner. 

“I say, you young French fellow! ” called out one of them, 
—“come away from that doorstep, and go somewhere else 


ALICE’S POSIES 


305 


with your nonsense! The Pyncheon family live there; and 
they are in great trouble, just about this time. They don’t 
feel musical to-day. It is reported all over town that Judge 
Pyncheon, who owns the house, has been murdered; and 
the city marshal is going to look into the matter. So be off 
with you, at once!” 

As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the 
doorstep a card, which had been covered, all the morning, 
by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon it, but 
was now shuffled into sight. He picked it up, and perceiving 
something written in pencil, gave it to the man to read. In 
fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Pyncheon’s with cer¬ 
tain pencilled memoranda on the back, referring to various 
businesses which it had been his purpose to transact during 
the preceding day. It formed a prospective epitome of the 
day’s history; only that affairs had not turned out altogether 
in accordance with the programme. The card must have 
been lost from the Judge’s vestpocket, in his prelimi¬ 
nary attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the 
house. Though well soaked with rain, it was still partially 
legible. 

“Look here, Dixey!” cried the man. “This has something 
to do with Judge Pyncheon. See!—here’s his name printed 
on it ; and here, I suppose, is some of his handwriting.” 

“Let’s go to the city marshal with it!” said Dixey. “It 
may give him just the clew he wants. After all,” whispered 
he in his companion’s ear, “it would be no wonder if the 
Judge has gone into that door and never come out again! 
A certain cousin of his may have been at his old tricks. 
And Old Maid Pyncheon having got herself in debt by the 
cent-shop,—and the Judge’s pocket-book being well filled,— 
and bad blood amongst them already! Put all these things 
together and see what they make!” 

“Hush, hush!” whispered the other. “It seems like a sin 




306 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


to be the first to speak of such a thing. But I think, with 
you, that we had better go to the city marshal.” 

“Yes, yes!” said Dixey. “Well!—I always said there was 
something devilish in that woman’s scowl! ” 

The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced their 
steps up the street. The Italian, also, made the best of his 
way off, with a parting glance up at the arched window. 
As for the children, they took to their heels, with one accord, 
and scampered as if some giant or ogre were in pursuit, 
until, at a good distance from the house, they stopped as 
suddenly and simultaneously as they had set out. Their 
susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what they 
had overheard. Looking back at the grotesque peaks and 
shadowy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a gloom 
diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine could 
dispel. An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and shook her 
finger at them, from several windows at the same moment. 
An imaginary Clifford—for (and it would have deeply 
wounded him to know it) he had always been a horror to 
these small people—stood behind the unreal Hepzibah, 
making awful gestures, in a faded dressing-gown. Children 
are even more apt, if possible, than grown people, to catch 
the contagion of a panic terror. For the rest of the day, 
the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake of 
avoiding the Seven Gables; while the bolder signalized their 
hardihood by challenging their comrades to race past the 
mansion at full speed. 

It could not have been more than half an hour after the 
disappearance of the Italian boy, with his unseasonable 
melodies, when a cab drove down the street. It stopped 
beneath the Pyncheon Elm; the cabman took a trunk, a 
canvas bag, and a bandbox, from the top of his vehicle, and 
deposited them on the doorstep of the old house; a straw 
bonnet, and then the pretty figure of a young girl came into 


ALICE’S POSIES 


307 


view from the interior of the cab. It was Phoebe! Though 
not altogether so blooming as when she first tripped into 
our story,—for, in the few intervening weeks, her experiences 
had made her graver, more womanly, and deeper-eyed, in 
token of a heart that had begun to suspect its depths,— 
still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over her. 
Neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things 
look real, rather than fantastic, within her sphere. Yet 
we feel it to be a questionable venture, even for Phoebe, at 
this juncture, to cross the threshold of the Seven Gables. 
Is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the 
crowd of pale, hideous, and sinful phantoms, that have 
gained admittance there since her departure? Or will she, 
likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and 
be only another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and 
down the stairs, and affright children as she pauses at the 
window ? 

At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl 
that there is nothing in human shape or substance to re¬ 
ceive her, unless it be the figure of Judge Pyncheon, who— 
wretched spectacle that he is, and frightful in our remem¬ 
brance, since our night-long vigil with him!—still keeps his 
place in the oaken chair. 

Phoebe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to her 
hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the window which 
formed the upper section of the door, struck her quick per¬ 
ceptive faculty as something unusual. Without making an¬ 
other effort to enter here, she betook herself to the great 
portal, under the arched window. Finding it fastened, she 
knocked. A reverberation came from the emptiness within. 
She knocked again, and a third time; and, listening intently, 
she fancied the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming, 
with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to admit her. But so 
dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary sound, that she 


308 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


began to question whether she might not have mistaken the 
house, familiar as she thought herself with its exterior. 

Her notice was now attracted by a child’s voice, at some 
distance. It appeared to call her name. Looking in the 
direction whence it proceeded, Phoebe saw little Ned Higgins, 
a good way down the street, stamping, shaking his head 
violently, making deprecatory gestures with both hands, and 
shouting to her at mouth-wide screech. 

“No, no, Phoebe!” he screamed. “Don’t you go in! 
There’s something wicked there! Don’t—don’t—don’t 
go in!” 

But, as the little personage could not be induced to ap¬ 
proach near enough to explain himself, Phoebe concluded 
that he had been frightened, on some of his visits to the 
shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; for the good lady’s mani¬ 
festations, in truth, ran about an equal chance of scaring 
children out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly 
laughter. Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how 
unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had be¬ 
come. As her next resort, Phoebe made her way into the 
garden, where on so warm and bright a day as the present, 
she had little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps Hepzibah 
also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of the arbor. 
Immediately on her entering the garden-gate, the family of 
hens half ran, half flew, to meet her; while a strange grimal¬ 
kin, which was prowling under the parlor window, took to 
his heels, clambered hastily over the fence, and vanished. 
The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular bench 
were still damp, and bestrewn with twigs, and the disarray 
of the past storm. The growth of the garden seemed to 
have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken ad¬ 
vantage of Phoebe’s absence, and the long-continued rain, 
to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables. 
Maule’s well had overflowed its stone border, and made a 


ALICE’S POSIES 


309 


pool of formidable breadth in that corner of the garden. 

The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot 
where no human foot had left its print for many preceding 
days,—probably not since Phoebe’s departure,—for she saw 
a side-comb of her own under the table of the arbor, where 
it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she and Clif¬ 
ford sat there. 

The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far 
greater oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their 
old house, as they appeared now to have done. Neverthe¬ 
less, with indistinct misgivings of something amiss, and ap¬ 
prehensions to which she could not give shape, she approached 
the door that formed the customary communication between 
the house and garden. It was secured within, like the two 
which she had already tried. She knocked, however; and 
immediately, as if the application had been expected, the 
door was drawn open, by a considerable exertion of some 
unseen person’s strength, not wide, but far enough to afford 
her a side-long entrance. As Hepzibah, in order not to 
expose herself to inspection from without, invariably opened 
a door in this manner, Phoebe necessarily concluded that it 
was her cousin who now admitted her. 

Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the 
threshold, and had no sooner entered than the door closed 
behind her. 


XX 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN 

Phcebe, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, 
was altogether bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked 
in most of the passages of the old house. She was not at 
first aware by whom she had been admitted. Before her 
eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a hand grasped 
her own, with a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus 
imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and 
thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment. She felt her¬ 
self drawn along, not towards the parlor, but into a large and 
unoccupied apartment, which had formerly been the grand 
reception-room of the Seven Gables. The sunshine came 
freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and 
fell upon the dusty floor; so that Phoebe now clearly saw— 
what, indeed, had been no secret, after the encounter of a 
warm hand with hers—that it was not Hepzibah nor Clif¬ 
ford, but Holgrave, to whom she owed her reception. The 
subtile, intuitive communication, or, rather, the vague and 
formless impression of something to be told, had made her 
yield unresistingly to his impulse. Without taking away her 
hand, she looked eagerly in his face, not quick to forbode 
evil, but unavoidably conscious that the state of the family 
had changed since her departure, and therefore anxious 
for an explanation. 

The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a thought¬ 
ful and' severe contraction of his forehead, tracing a deep, 

310 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN 


311 


vertical line between the eyebrows. His smile, however, 
was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy, by far the 
most vivid expression that Phoebe had ever witnessed, shin¬ 
ing out of the New England reserve with which Holgrave 
habitually masked whatever lay near his heart. It was the 
look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful 
object, in a dreary forest, or illimitable desert, would recog¬ 
nize the familiar aspect of his dearest friend, bringing up 
all the peaceful ideas that belong to home, and the gentle 
current of every-day affairs. And yet, as he felt the necessity 
of responding to her look of inquiry, the smile disappeared. 

“I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phoebe,” said 
he. “We meet at a strange moment!” 

“What has happened?” she exclaimed. “Why is the house 
so deserted? Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?” 

“Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!” answered Hol¬ 
grave. “We are alone in the house!” 

“Hepzibah and Clifford gone?” cried Phoebe. “It is not 
possible! And why have you brought me into this room, 
instead of the parlor ? Ah, something terrible has happened! 
I must run and see!” 

“No, no, Phoebe!” said Holgrave, holding her back. “It 
is as I have told you. They are gone, and I know not whither. 
A terrible event has, indeed, happened, but not to them, 
nor, as I undoubtingly believe, through any agency of theirs. 
If I read your character rightly, Phoebe,” he continued, 
fixing his eyes on hers, with stern anxiety, intermixed with 
tenderness, “gentle as you are, and seeming to have your 
sphere among common things, you yet possess remarkable 
strength. You have wonderful poise, and a faculty which, 
when tested, will prove itself capable of dealing with mat¬ 
ters that fall far out of the ordinary rule.” 

“Oh, no, I am very weak!” replied Phoebe, trembling. 
“But tell me what has happened!” 


312 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


“You are strong! ” persisted Holgrave. “You must be both 
strong and wise; for I am all astray, and need your counsel. 
It may be you can suggest the one right thing to do! ” 

“Tell me!—tell me!” said Phoebe, all in a tremble. “It 
oppresses,—it terrifies me,—this mystery! Anything else 
I can bear!” 

The artist hesitated. Notwithstanding what he had just 
said, and most sincerely, in regard to the self-balancing 
power with which Phoebe impressed him, it still seemed 
almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to her 
knowledge. It was like dragging a hideous shape of death 
into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire, 
where it would present all the uglier aspect, amid the 
decorousness of everything about it. Yet it could not be 
concealed from her; she must needs know it. 

“Phoebe,” said he, “do you remember this?” 

He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same that he 
had shown her at their first interview in the garden, and 
which so strikingly brought out the hard and relentless traits 
of the original. 

“What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?” asked 
Phoebe, with impatient surprise that Holgrave should so 
trifle with her at such a moment. “It is Judge Pyncheon! 
You have shown it to me before!” 

“But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour,” 
said the artist, presenting her with another miniature. “I 
had just finished it, when I heard you at the door.” 

“This is death!” shuddered Phoebe, turning very pale. 
“Judge Pyncheon dead!” 

“Such as there represented,” said Holgrave, “he sits in 
the next room. The Judge is dead, and Clifford and Hepzi¬ 
bah have vanished! I know no more. All beyond is con¬ 
jecture. On returning to my solitary chamber, last evening, 
I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Hepzibah’s room, 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN 


313 


or Clifford’s; no stir nor footstep about the house. This 
morning, there was the same death-like quiet. From my 
window, I overheard the testimony of a neighbor, that your 
relatives were seen leaving the house, in the midst of yes¬ 
terday’s storm. A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pyn- 
cheon’s being missed. A feeling which I cannot describe—an 
indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or consummation—im¬ 
pelled me to make my way into this part of the house, where 
I discovered what you see. As a point of evidence that may 
be useful to Clifford, and also as a memorial valuable to my¬ 
self,—for, Phoebe, there are hereditary reasons that connect 
me strangely with that man’s fate,—I used the means at my 
disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge Pyncheon’s 
death.” 

Even in her agitation, Phoebe could not help remarking 
the calmness of Holgrave’s demeanor. He appeared, it is 
true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge’s death, yet 
had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of 
surprise, but as an event preordained, happening inevitably, 
and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could almost 
have been prophesied. 

“Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called in 
witnesses?” inquired she, with a painful shudder. “It is 
terrible to be here alone!” 

“But Clifford!” suggested the artist. “Clifford and Hep- 
zibah! We must consider what is best to be done in their 
behalf. It is a wretched fatality that they should have dis¬ 
appeared! Their flight will throw the worst coloring over 
this event of which it is susceptible. Yet how easy is the 
explanation, t^o those who know them! Bewildered and 
terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a former 
one, which was attended with such disastrous consequences 
to Clifford, they have had no idea but of removing them¬ 
selves from the scene. How miserably unfortunate! Had 


314 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Hepzibah but shrieked aloud,—had Clifford flung wide the 
door, and proclaimed Judge Pyncheon’s death,—it would 
have been, however awful in itself, an event fruitful of good 
consequences to them. As I view it, it would have gone far 
towards obliterating the black stain on Clifford’s character.” 

“And how,” asked Phoebe, “could any good come from what 
is so very dreadful?” 

“Because,” said the artist, “if the matter can be fairly 
considered and candidly interpreted, it must be evident that 
Judge Pyncheon could not have come unfairly to his end. 
This mode of death has been an idiosyncrasy with his family, 
for generations past; not often occurring, indeed, but, when 
it does occur, usually attacking individuals about the Judge’s 
time of life, and generally in the tension of some mental 
crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath. Old Maule’s 
prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this 
physical predisposition in the Pyncheon race. Now, there 
is a minute and almost exact similarity in the appearances 
connected with the death that occurred yesterday and those 
recorded of the death of Clifford’s uncle thirty years ago. 
It is true, there was a certain arrangement of circumstances, 
unnecessary to be recounted, which made it possible—nay, 
as men look at these things, probable, or even certain—that 
old Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent death, and by Clif¬ 
ford’s hands.” 

“Whence came those circumstances?” exclaimed Phoebe; 
“he being innocent, as we know him to be! ” 

“They were arranged,” said Holgrave,—“at least such has 
long been my conviction,—they were arranged after the 
uncle’s death, and before it was made public, by the man 
who sits in yonder parlor. His own death, so like that for¬ 
mer one, yet attended by none of those suspicious circum¬ 
stances, seems the stroke of God upon him, at once a punish¬ 
ment for his wickedness, and making plain the innocence of 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN 


315 


Clifford. But this flight,—it distorts everything! He may 
be in concealment, near at hand. Could we but bring him 
back before the discovery of the Judge’s death the evil 
might be rectified.” 

“We must not hide this thing a moment longer!” said 
Phoebe. “It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts. 
Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest! Let us 
throw open the doors, and call all the neighborhood to see 
the truth!” 

“You are right, Phoebe,” rejoined Holgrave. “Doubtless 
you are right.” 

Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper 
to Phoebe’s sweet and order-loving character, at thus finding 
herself at issue with society, and brought in contact with 
an event that transcended ordinary rules. Neither was he 
in haste, like her, to betake himself within the precincts of 
common life. On the contrary, he gathered a wild enjoy¬ 
ment,—as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in a 
desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind,—such a flower 
of momentary happiness he gathered from his present posi¬ 
tion. It separated Phoebe and himself from the w T orld, and 
bound them to each other, by their exclusive knowledge of 
Judge Pyncheon’s mysterious death, and the counsel which 
they were forced to hold respecting it. The secret, so long 
as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a 
spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire 
as that of an island in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean 
would flow betwixt them, standing on its widely sundered 
shores. Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their situation 
seemed to draw them together; they were like two children 
who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another’s side, 
through a shadow-haunted passage. The image of awful 
Death, which filled the house, held them united by his 
stiffened grasp. 


316 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


These influences hastened the development of emotions 
that might not otherwise have flowered so. Possibly, in¬ 
deed, it had been Holgrave’s purpose to let them die in their 
undeveloped germs. 

“Why do we delay so?” asked Phoebe. “This secret takes 
away my breath! Let us throw open the doors!” 

“In all our lives there can never come another moment 
like this! ” said Holgrave. “Phoebe, is it all terror ?—nothing 
but terror? Are you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has 
made this the only point of life worth living for?” 

“It seems a sin,” replied Phoebe, trembling, “to think of 
joy at such a time!” 

“Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me the 
hour before you came!” exclaimed the artist. “A dark, 
cold, miserable hour! The presence of yonder dead man 
threw a great black shadow over everything; he made the 
universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of 
guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt. The 
sense of it took away my youth. I never hoped to feel young 
again! The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; my 
past life, so lonesome and dreary; my future, a shapeless 
gloom, which I must mould into gloomy shapes! But, Phoebe, 
you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and joy came 
in with you! The black moment became at once a blissful 
one. It must not pass without the spoken word. I love you! ” 

“How can you love a simple girl like me?” asked Phoebe, 
compelled by his earnestness to speak. “You have many, 
many thoughts, with which I should try in vain to sym¬ 
pathize. And I,—I, too,—I have tendencies with which 
you would sympathize as little. That is less matter. But 
I have not scope enough to make you happy.” 

“You are my only possibility of happiness!” answered 
Holgrave. “I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it 
on me! ” 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN 


317 


“And then—I am afraid!” continued Phoebe, shrinking 
towards Holgrave, even while she told him so frankly the 
doubts with which he affected her. “You will lead me out of 
my own quiet path. You will make me strive to follow you 
where it is pathless. I cannot do so. It is not my nature. 
I shall sink down and perish!” 

“Ah, Phoebe!” exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, 
and a smile that was burdened with thought. “It will be 
far otherwise than as you forbode. The world owes all its 
onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man in¬ 
evitably confines himself within ancient limits. I have a 
presentiment that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out 
trees, to make fences,—perhaps, even, in due time, to build 
a house for another generation,—in a word, to conform my¬ 
self to laws, and the peaceful practice of society. Your poise 
will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of 
mine.” 

“I would not have it so! ” said Phoebe, earnestly. 

“Do you love me?” asked Holgrave. “If we love one an¬ 
other, the moment has room for nothing more. Let us 
pause upon it, and be satisfied. Do you love me, Phoebe ?” 

“You look into my heart,” said she, letting her eyes drop. 
“You know I love you!” 

And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the 
one miracle was wrought, without which every human exist¬ 
ence is a blank. The bliss which makes all things true, 
beautiful, and holy shone around this youth and maiden. 
They were conscious of nothing sad nor old. They trans¬ 
figured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves 
the two first dwellers in it. The dead man, so close beside 
them, was forgotten. At such a crisis, there is no death; 
for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces everything 
in its hallowed atmosphere. 

But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again! 


318 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

“Hark!” whispered Phoebe. “Somebody is at the street- 
door!” 

“Now let us meet the world!” said Holgrave. “No doubt, 
the rumor of Judge Pyncheon’s visit to this house, and the 
flight of Hepzibah and Clifford, is about to lead to the in¬ 
vestigation of the premises. We have no way but to meet 
it. Let us open the door at once.” 

But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street- 
door,—even before they quitted the room in which the fore¬ 
going interview had passed,—they heard footsteps in the 
farther passage. The door, therefore, which they supposed 
to be securely locked,—which Holgrave, indeed, had seen 
to be so, and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to enter,— 
must have been opened from without. The sound of foot¬ 
steps was not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the 
gait of strangers would naturally be, making authoritative 
entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves unwel¬ 
come. It was feeble, as of persons either weak or weary; there 
was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the 
listeners. 

“Can it be?” whispered Holgrave. 

“It is they!” answered Phoebe. “Thank God!—thank 
God!” 

And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe’s whispered 
ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah’s voice, more distinctly. 

“Thank God, my brother, we are at home!” 

“Well!—Yes!—thank God!” responded Clifford. “A 
dreary home, Hepzibah! But you have done well to bring 
me hither! Stay! That parlor-door is open. I cannot pass 
by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor, where I used,— 
oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has befallen 
us,—where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe! ” 

But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford 
imagined it. They had not made many steps,—in truth, 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN 


319 


they were lingering in the entry, with the listlessness of an 
accomplished purpose, uncertain what to do next,—when 
Phoebe ran to meet them. On beholding her, Hepzibah burst 
into tears. With all her might, she had staggered onward 
beneath the burden of grief and responsibility, until now 
that it was safe to fling it down. Indeed, she had not energy 
to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and suffered it 
to press her to the earth. Clifford appeared the stronger 
of the two. 

“It is our own little Phoebe!—Ah! and Holgrave with 
her,” exclaimed he, with a glance of keen and delicate in¬ 
sight, and a smile, beautiful, kind, but melancholy. “I 
thought of you both, as we came down the street, and be¬ 
held Alice’s Posies in full bloom. And so the flower of Eden 
has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house, to-day!” 


XXI 


THE DEPARTURE 

The sudden death of so prominent a member of the social 
world as the Honorable Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon created 
a sensation (at least, in the circles more immediately con¬ 
nected with the deceased) which had hardly quite subsided 
in a fortnight. 

It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which 
constitute a person’s biography, there is scarcely one—none, 
certainly, of anything like a similar importance—to which 
the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death. In most 
other cases and contingencies, the individual is present among 
us, mixed up with the daily revolution of affairs, and afford¬ 
ing a definite point for observation. At his decease, there 
is only a vacancy, and a momentary eddy,—very small, as 
compared with the apparent magnitude of the ingurgitated 
object,—and a bubble or two, ascending out of the black 
depth and bursting at the surface. As regarded Judge Pyn¬ 
cheon, it seemed probable, at first blush, that the mode of his 
final departure might give him a larger and longer post¬ 
humous vogue than ordinarily attends the memory of a 
distinguished man. But when it came to be understood, on 
the highest professional authority, that the event was a 
natural, and—except for some unimportant particulars, de¬ 
noting a slight idiosyncrasy—by no means an unusual form 
of death, the public, with its customary alacrity, proceeded 
to forget that he had ever lived. In short, the honorable 

320 


THE DEPARTURE 


321 


Judge was beginning to be a stale subject before half 
the county newspapers had found time to put their col¬ 
umns in mourning, and publish his exceedingly eulogistic 
obituary. 

Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places which 
this excellent person had haunted in his lifetime, there was 
a hidden stream of private talk, such as it would have 
shocked all decency to speak loudly at the street-corners. 
It is very singular, how the fact of a man’s death often 
seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether 
for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was 
living and acting among them. Death is so genuine a fact 
that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness; it is a 
touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser 
metal. Could the departed, whoever he may be, return in 
a week after his decease, he would almost invariably find 
himself at a higher or lower point than he had formerly 
occupied, on the scale of public appreciation. But the talk, 
or scandal, to which we now allude, had reference to matters 
of no less old a date than the supposed murder, thirty or 
forty years ago, of the late Judge Pyncheon’s uncle. The 
medical opinion, with regard to his own recent and re¬ 
gretted decease, had almost entirely obviated the idea that 
a murder was committed in the former case. Yet, as the 
record showed, there were circumstances irrefragably indicat¬ 
ing that some person had gained access to old Jaffrey Pyn¬ 
cheon’s private apartments, at or near the moment of his 
death. His desk and private drawers, in a room contiguous 
to his bedchamber, had been ransacked; money and valuable 
articles were missing; there was a bloody hand-print on the 
old man’s linen; and, by a powerfully welded chain of de¬ 
ductive evidence, the guilt of the robbery and apparent 
murder had been fixed on Clifford, then residing with his 
uncle in the House of the Seven Gables. 


322 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that 
undertook so to account for these circumstances as to exclude 
the idea of Clifford’s agency. Many persons affirmed that 
the history and elucidation of the facts, long so mysterious, 
had been obtained by the daguerreotypist from one of those 
mesmerical seers, who, nowadays, so strangely perplex the 
aspect of human affairs, and put everybody’s natural vision 
to the blush, by the marvels which they see with their 
eyes shut. 

According to this version of the story, Judge Pyncheon, 
exemplary as we have portrayed him in our narrative, was, 
in his youth, an apparently irreclaimable scapegrace. The 
brutish, the animal instincts, as is often the case, had been 
developed earlier than the intellectual qualities, and the 
force of character, for which he was afterwards remarkable. 
He had shown himself wild, dissipated, addicted to low 
pleasures, little short of ruffianly in his propensities, and 
recklessly expensive, with no other resources than the bounty 
of his uncle. This course of conduct had alienated the old 
bachelor’s affection, once strongly fixed upon him. Now it 
is averred,—but whether on authority available in a court 
of justice, we do not pretend to have investigated,—that 
the young man was tempted by the devil, one night, to 
search his uncle’s private drawers, to which he had unsus¬ 
pected means of access. While thus criminally occupied, he 
was startled by the opening of the chamber-door. There 
stood old Jaffrey Pyncheon, in his nightclothes! The sur¬ 
prise of such a discovery, his agitation, alarm, and horror, 
brought on the crisis of a disorder to which the old bachelor 
had an hereditary liability; he seemed to choke with blood, 
and fell upon the floor, striking his temple a heavy blow 
against the corner of a table. What was to be done? The 
old man was surely dead! Assistance would come too late! 
What a misfortune, indeed, should it come too soon, since 


THE DEPARTURE 


323 


his reviving consciousness would bring the recollection of 
the ignominious offence which he had beheld his nephew in 
the very act of committing! 

But he never did revive. With the cool hardihood that 
always pertained to him, the young man continued his 
search of the drawers, and found a will, of recent date, in 
favor of Clifford,—which he destroyed,—and an older one, 
in his own favor, which he suffered to remain. But before 
retiring, Jaffrey bethought himself of the evidence, in these 
ransacked drawers, that some one had visited the chamber 
with sinister purposes. Suspicion, unless averted, might fix 
upon the real offender. In the very presence of the dead 
man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should free himself at 
the expense of Clifford, his rival, for whose character he 
had at once a contempt and a repugnance. It is not probable, 
be it said, that he acted with any set purpose of involving 
Clifford in a charge of murder. Knowing that his uncle 
did not die by violence, it may not have occurred to him, 
in the hurry of the crisis, that such an inference might be 
drawn. But, when the affair took this darker aspect, Jaffrey’s 
previous steps had already pledged him to those which re¬ 
mained. So craftily had he arranged the circumstances, 
that, at Clifford’s trial, his cousin hardly found it necessary 
to swear to anything false, but only to withhold the one 
decisive explanation, by refraining to state what he had 
himself done and witnessed. 

Thus Jaffrey Pyncheon’s inward criminality, as regarded 
Clifford, was, indeed, black and damnable; while its mere 
outward show and positive commission was the smallest that 
could possibly consist with so great a sin. This is just the 
sort of guilt that a man of eminent respectability finds it 
easiest to dispose of. It was suffered to fade out of sight 
or be reckoned a venial matter, in the Honorable 'Judge 
Pyncheon’s long subsequent survey of his own life. He 


324 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


shuffled it aside, among the forgotten and forgiven frailties 
of his youth, and seldom thought of it again. 

We leave the Judge to his repose. He could not be styled 
fortunate at the hour of death. Unknowingly, he was a 
childless man, while striving to add more wealth to his only 
child’s inheritance. Hardly a week after his decease, one of 
the Cunard steamers brought intelligence of the death, by 
cholera, of Judge Pyncheon’s son, just at the point of em¬ 
barkation for his native land. By this misfortune Clifford 
became rich; so did Hepzibah; so did our little vil¬ 
lage maiden, and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth 
and all manner of conservatism,—the wild reformer,—Hol- 
grave! 

It was now far too late in Clifford’s life for the good 
opinion of society to be worth the trouble and anguish of a 
formal vindication. What he needed was the love of a very 
few; not the admiration, or even the respect, of the unknown 
many. The latter might probably have been won for him, 
had those on whom the guardianship of his welfare had 
fallen deemed it advisable to expose Clifford to a miserable 
resuscitation of past ideas, when the condition of whatever 
comfort he might expect lay in the calm of forgetfulness. 
After such wrong as he had suffered, there is no reparation. 
The pitiable mockery of it, which the world might have been 
ready enough to offer, coming so long after the agony had 
done its utmost work, would have been fit only to provoke 
bitterer laughter than poor Clifford was ever capable of. 
It is a truth (and it would be a very sad one but for the 
higher hopes which it suggests) that no great mistake, 
whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is ever really 
set right. Time, the continual vicissitude of circumstances, 
and the invariable inopportunity of death, render it impos¬ 
sible. If, after long lapse of years, the right seems to be in 
our power, we find no niche to set it in. The better remedy 


THE DEPARTURE 325 

is for the sufferer to pass on, and leave what he once thought 
his irreparable ruin far behind him. 

The shock of Judge Pyncheon’s death had a permanently 
invigorating and ultimately beneficial effect on Clifford. 
That strong and ponderous man had been Clifford’s night¬ 
mare. There was no free breath to be drawn, within the 
sphere of so malevolent an influence. The first effect of 
freedom, as we have witnessed in Clifford’s aimless flight, 
was a tremulous exhilaration. Subsiding from it, he did not 
sink into his former intellectual apathy. He never, it is 
true, attained to nearly the full measure of what might have 
been his faculties. But he recovered enough of them par¬ 
tially to light up his character, to display some outline of 
the marvelous grace that was abortive in it, and to make 
him the object of no less deep, although less melancholy 
interest than heretofore. He was evidently happy. Could 
we pause to give another picture of his daily life, with all 
the appliances now at command to gratify his instinct for 
the Beautiful, the garden scenes, that seemed so sweet to him, 
would look mean and trivial in comparison. 

Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepzibah, 
and little Phoebe, with the approval of the artist, concluded 
to remove from the dismal old House of the Seven Gables, 
and take Up their abode, for the present, at the elegant 
country-seat of the late Judge Pyncheon. Chanticleer and 
his family had already been transported thither, where the 
two hens had forthwith begun an indefatigable process of 
egg-laying, with an evident design, as a matter of duty and 
conscience, to continue their illustrious breed under better 
auspices than for a century past. On the day set for their 
departure, the principal personages of our story, including 
good old Uncle Venner, were assembled in the parlor. 

“The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far 
as the plan goes,’’observed Holgrave, as the party were dis- 


326 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


cussing their future arrangements. “But I wonder that the 
late Judge—being so opulent, and with a reasonable pros¬ 
pect of transmitting his wealth to descendants of his own— 
should not have felt the propriety of embodying so excellent 
a piece of domestic architecture in stone, rather than in 
wood. Then, every generation of the family might have 
altered the interior, to suit its own taste and convenience; 
while the exterior, through the lapse of years, might have 
been adding venerableness to its original beauty, and thus 
giving that impression of permanence which I consider 
essential to the happiness of any one moment.” 

“Why,” cried Phoebe, gazing into the artist’s face with 
infinite amazement, “how wonderfully your ideas are 
changed! A house of stone, indeed! It is but two or three 
weeks ago that you seemed to wish people to live in some¬ 
thing as fragile and temporary as a bird’s-nest! ” 

“Ah, Phoebe, I told you how it would be! ” said the artist, 
with a half-melancholy laugh. “You find me a conservative 
already! Little did I think ever to become one. It is 
especially unpardonable in this dwelling of so much hereditary 
misfortune, and under the eye of yonder portrait of a model 
conservative, who, in that very character, rendered himself 
so long the evil destiny of his race.” 

“That picture!” said Clifford, seeming to shrink from its 
stern glance. “Whenever I look at it, there is an old dreamy 
recollection haunting me, but keeping just beyond the grasp 
of my mind. Wealth, it seems to say!—boundless wealth!— 
unimaginable wealth! I could fancy that, when I was a 
child, or a youth, that portrait had spoken, and told me a rich 
secret, or had held forth its hand, with the written record 
of hidden opulence. But those old matters are so dim with 
me, nowadays! What could this dream have been?” 

“Perhaps I can recall it,” answered Holgrave. “See! 
There are a hundred chances to one that no person, un- 


THE DEPARTURE 


327 


acquainted with the secret, would ever touch this spring” 

“A secret spring!” cried Clifford. “Ah, I remember now! 
I did discover it, one summer afternoon, when I was idling 
and dreaming about the house, long, long. ago. But the 
mystery escapes me.” 

The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which he 
had referred. In former days, the effect would probably 
have been to cause the picture to start forward. But, in so 
long a period of concealment, the machinery had been eaten 
through with rust; so that at Holgrave’s pressure, the por¬ 
trait, frame and all, tumbled suddenly from its position, 
and lay face downward on the floor. A recess in the wall 
was thus brought to light, in which lay an object so covered 
with a century’s dust that it could not immediately be recog¬ 
nized as a folded sheet of parchment. Holgrave opened it, 
and displayed an ancient deed, signed with the hieroglyphics 
of several Indian sagamores, and conveying to Colonel Pyn- 
cheon and his heirs, forever, a vast extent of territory at 
the Eastward. 

“This is the very parchment the attempt to recover which 
cost the beautiful Alice Pyncheon her happiness and life,” 
said the artist, alluding to his legend. “It is what the Pyn- 
cheons sought in vain, while it was valuable; and now that 
they find the treasure, it has long been worthless.” 

“Poor Cousin Jaffrey! This is what deceived him,” ex¬ 
claimed Hepzibah. “When they were young together, Clif¬ 
ford probably made a kind of fairy-tale of this discovery. 
He was always dreaming hither and thither about the house, 
and lighting up its dark corners with beautiful stories. And 
poor Jaffrey, who took hold of everything as if it were real, 
thought my brother had found out his uncle’s wealth. He 
died with this delusion in his mind!” 

“But,” said Phoebe, apart to Holgrave, “how came you to 
know the secret ?” 


328 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


“My dearest Phoebe,” said Holgrave, “how will it please 
you to assume the name of Maule? As for the secret, it is 
the only inheritance that has come down to me from my 
ancestors. You should have known sooner (only that I was 
afraid of frightening you away) that, in this long drama of 
wrong and retribution, I represent the old wizard, and am 
probably as much a wizard as ever he was. The son of the 
executed Matthew Maule, while building this house, took 
the opportunity to construct that recess, and hide away the 
Indian deed, on which depended the immense land-claim of 
the Pyncheons. Thus they bartered their Eastern territory 
for Maule’s garden-ground.” 

“And now,” said Uncle Venner, “I suppose their whole 
claim is not worth one man’s share in my farm yonder! ” 

“Uncle Venner,” cried Phoebe, taking the patched philos¬ 
opher’s hand, “you must never talk any more about your 
farm! You shall never go there, as long as you live! There 
is a cottage in our new garden,—the prettiest little yellowish- 
brown cottage you ever saw; and the sweetest-looking place, 
for it looks just as if it were made of gingerbread,—and we 
are going to fit it up and furnish it, on purpose for you. 
And you shall do nothing but what you choose, and shall 
be as happy as the day is long, and shall keep Cousin Clif¬ 
ford in spirits with the wisdom and pleasantness which is 
always dropping from your lips! ” 

“Ah! my dear child,” quoth good Uncle Venner, quite 
overcome, “if you were to speak to a young man as you do 
to an old one, his chance of keeping his heart another minute 
would not be worth one of the buttons on my waistcoat! 
And—soul alive!—that great sigh, which you made me 
heave, has burst off the very last of them! But, never 
mind! It was the happiest sigh I ever did heave; and it 
seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp of heavenly breath, 
to make it with. Well, well, Miss Phoebe! They’ll mis s 


THE DEPARTURE 


329 


me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the back doors; 
and Pyncheon Street, I’m afraid, will hardly look the same 
without old Uncle Venner, who remembers it with a mowing 
field on one side, and the garden of the Seven Gables on 
the other. But either I must go to your country-seat, or you 
must come to my farm,—that’s one of two things certain; 
and I leave you to choose which! ” 

“Oh, come with us, by all means, Uncle Venner!” said 
Clifford, who had a remarkable enjoyment of the old man’s 
mellow, quiet, and simple spirit. “I want you always to be 
within five minutes’ saunter of my chair. You are the only 
philosopher I ever knew of whose wisdom has not a drop 
of bitter essence at the bottom!” 

“Dear me!” cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly to 
realize what manner of man he was. “And yet folks used 
to set me down among the simple ones, in my younger days! 
But I suppose I am like a Roxbury russet,—a great deal 
the better, the longer I can be kept. Yes; and my words of 
wisdom, that you and Phoebe tell me of, are like the golden 
dandelions, which never grow in the hot months, but may 
be seen glistening among the withered grass, and under the 
dry leaves, sometimes as late as December. And you are 
welcome, friends, to my mess of dandelions, if there were 
twice as many!” 

A plain, but handsome, dark-green barouche had now 
drawn up in front of the ruinous portal of the old mansion- 
house. The party came forth, and (with the exception of 
good Uncle Venner, who was to follow in a few days) pro¬ 
ceeded to take their places. They were chatting and laugh¬ 
ing very pleasantly together; and—as proves to be often 
the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate with 
sensibility—Clifford and Hepzibah bade a final farewell to 
the abode of their forefathers, with hardly more emotion 
than if they had made it their arrangement to return thither 


330 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


at tea-time. Several children were drawn to the spot by so 
unusual a spectacle as the barouche and pair of gray horses. 
Recognizing little Ned Higgins among them, Hepzibah put 
her hand into her pocket, and presented the urchin, her 
earliest and staunchest customer, with silver enough to people 
the Domdaniel cavern of his t interior with as various a pro¬ 
cession of quadrupeds as passed into the ark. 

Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove off. 

“Well, Dixey,” said one of them, “what do you think of 
this? My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five 
dollars on her outlay. Old Maid Pyncheon has been in trade 
just about as long, and rides off in her carriage with a couple 
of hundred thousand,—reckoning her share, and Clifford’s, 
and Phoebe’s,—and some say twice as much! If you choose 
to call it luck, it is all very well; but if w T e are to take it as 
the will of Providence, why, I can’t exactly fathom it! ” 

“Pretty good business!” quoth the sagacious Dixey,— 
“pretty good business!” 

Maule’s well, all this time, though left in solitude, was 
throwing up a succession of kaleidoscopic pictures, in which 
a gifted eye might have seen foreshadowed the coming for¬ 
tunes of Hepzibah and Clifford, and the descendant of the 
legendary wizard, and the village maiden, over whom he 
had thrown Love’s web of sorcery. The Pyncheon Elm, 
moreover, with what foliage the September gale had spared 
to it, whispered unintelligible prophecies. And wise Uncle 
Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to 
hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon 
—after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe, and this 
present happiness, of her kindred mortals—had given one 
farewell touch of a spirit’s joy upon her harpsichord, as she 
floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables! 


APPENDIX 

















* 



















A STUDY OF THE STORY 

QUALITY 

A work of fiction which demands careful study for its 
appreciation may be a good book, but when this careful study 
yields continued pleasure and profit in frequent rereading, 
the book surely approaches the level of greatness. Such a 
Work of fiction is The House of the Seven Gables. It has been 
included as a classic text in secondary-school curriculums 
for a quarter of a century. Some twenty years ago certain 
English teachers questioned its place in high-school curricu¬ 
lums because they thought it beyond the appreciation of 
the pupils. As a result of this, the following question ap¬ 
peared in the college board entrance examination of 1913: 
“Should The House of the Seven Gables be retained on the 
list of books required for reading ?” Apparently* the majority 
of the students answered this question in the affirmative, for 
the book has continued to be on the restricted list for college 
entrance, and indications are that it will continue to be read 
by boys and girls for years to come. 

On April 24, 1851, James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) 
began a letter to Hawthorne as follows: “I have been so 
delighted with The House of the Seven Gables that I cannot 
help sitting down to tell you so. I thought I could not for¬ 
give you if you wrote anything better than The Scarlet 
Letter; but I cannot help believing it a great triumph that 
you should have been able to deepen and widen the im¬ 
pression made by such a book as that. It seems to me that 

333 


334 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


the House is the most valuable contribution to New England 
history that has been made.” 

Twenty years later, in 1871, Henry James, the novelist 
and literary critic (1843-1916), wrote a biography of Haw¬ 
thorne for the English Men of Letters Series. In this biog¬ 
raphy he says of The House of the Seven Gables: “It is 
a large and generous production, pervaded with that vague 
hum, that indefinable echo of the multitudinous life of man, 
which is the real sign of a great work of fiction.” 

Certainly a work of fiction so highly ranked by James 
Russell Lowell and Henry James is a fitting challenge to 
the intelligent appreciation of the American high-school 
student. The volumes that have been written about its 
author since his death, in 1864, are eloquent testimony that 
something of great human interest must be displayed in the 
pages of this great work of fiction. 


CLASSIFICATION 

Fiction, broadly speaking, is classified as romantic and 
realistic, with the term romance to designate the former and 
the term novel to identify the latter. Both these expressions, 
however, enjoy some flexibility, for realism is present in 
most romances, and the actual facts described in novels are 
often adorned with fancy. 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), for example, set out 
resolutely to present some of the facts about human nature 
with greater truth than had been done before and to do 
this with reference to people we know. He succeeded in 
writing very realistic novels, yet much fancy, which is the 
substance of romance, adorns his facts. It appears in his 
description of places and characters and in his personifica¬ 
tion of objects to put them in harmony with his characters. 
He adorns fact by distorting certain portions of it and in- 


A STUDY OF THE STORY 


335 


troduces unusual associations to an extent that results in 
exaggeration. This is the basis of both his pathos and his 
humor. Hawthorne, on the other hand, has given us in The 
House of the Seven Gables an example of a romance which 
has in it much of the New England life both of the past and 
the present. 

The House itself has been recognized by the public and 
seized upon as the original of the story. It continues to be 
shown to this day to multitudes of pilgrims. The little 
shop-window with its display of gingerbread animals and 
the dancing Jim Crow; the interior stock of apples, flour, 
and Indian meal in barrels; square pine-wood boxes full of 
soap in bars, and tallow candles; the brown sugar, white 
beans, and split peas; the glass pickle-jar filled with Gibraltar 
rock candy; the lucifer matches—all are as realistic and un- 
exaggerated as a kodak picture. Just as genuine are the 
daily rounds of the garbage collector, the rattle of the baker’s 
cart through the street, the milkman distributing the con¬ 
tents of his cans from door to door, the harsh peal of the 
fisherman’s conch shell; the visits of the scissors grinder, 
and the Italian boy with his barrel-organ and monkey; the 
water-cart leaving its broad wake of moistened earth like 
a summer shower; not to mention the morning sunshine 
which “might now be seen stealing down the front of the 
opposite house, from the windows of which came a re¬ 
flected gleam, struggling through the boughs of the elm- 
tree, and enlightening the interior of the shop more dis¬ 
tinctly than heretofore.” Finally in this list of New England 
realities must be included the east wind which for days 
together blows its chill blast and driving rain against the 
House of the Seven Gables. 

Thus we see that a realistic novel may be full of fancy, 
and a romance may be full of realities. The author’s pur¬ 
pose determines the classification of the work as a novel or 


336 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

a romance. For a clearer understanding of the character 
of the romance of The House of the Seven Gables, read care¬ 
fully the facts presented in the author’s preface on page li. 

1. What is obviously the author’s purpose in calling his 
work a romance rather than a novel? 

2. Define accurately the requirements of a novel. 

3. (a) Enumerate specifically the privileges granted to the 
author of a romance. 

(b) What rigid requirement is made of the author of a 
romance ? 

4. (a) In what point of view does The House of the Seven 
Gables come under the romantic definition ? 

(b) May the reader ignore this point of view? Explain. 

5. (a) What is the theme of The House of the Seven Gables? 

(b) What moral lesson may be deduced from it? 

(c) Has the author any idea that his readers will deduce 
such a lesson? Discuss. 

(d) Has the author taken any pains to emphasize the 
moral of the story? Why? 

6. What reasons does the author urge against the reader’s 
assigning an actual locality to the imaginary events of 
the story? 

7. (a) What is the source of the characters in the story? 
(b) Why does the author wish them to be unlocalized? 


THE PLOT 

Although the action of The House of the Seven Gables is 
accomplished within a period of a little more than six weeks, 
and several weeks of this period are marked as elapsed time, 
the structure of the plot extends nearly to the limits of two 
hundred years. Reduced to its simple form the plot may 
be said to include the following ingredients: a contention 
between a prominent man and an obscure man over a portion 
of land; a curse; an execution; the erection of a large house 


A STUDY OF THE STORY 


337 


on the disputed land; the mysterious death of its owner; 
the disappearance of a deed to extensive property; a lapse 
of time; the apparent disappearance of descendants of the 
obscure man; the descendants of the prominent man in 
estranged circumstances over a murder in the family; the 
persistence of the curse; the mystery of the lost deed; 
the fall of family pride; the advent of new blood in the 
family; a stranger in the family affairs; an illuminating maga¬ 
zine story about the curse on the family; another mysteri¬ 
ous death; revelation of the mysteries; removal of the curse. 


THE THEME 

The theme which determines the solution of the plot, we 
have already noted in our study of the author’s preface. 
This truth is severely stated in the Bible in the following 
words: 


“4. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, 
nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above 
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water 
under the earth. 

“5. Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, 
nor serve them; for I, Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous 
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the chil¬ 
dren, upon the third and upon the fourth generation 
of them that hate me.” 

The author has fittingly chosen to envelop every reference 
to this and every step of its delineation in the shadowy word¬ 
ing of romance. This romantic treatment is the charm of 
the story; it enables us to read it through, believing with 
the author that such things cannot be. We pride ourselves 
all the way through that we are superior to a belief in the 
supernatural elements of the story, and yet, when we read 
the last sentence of the last chapter, we are surprised to find 


338 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


ourselves giving a sigh of satisfaction. The truth of the 
whole narrative rests upon us in its conclusion in a soul- 
satisfying and ennobling influence that is seldom experienced 
in fiction outside of a tragedy of Shakespeare, such as Macbeth 
or Hamlet. 


THE SETTING 

The setting is realistically New England, but its treat¬ 
ment is decidedly romantic. The activity that circulates 
about the House of the Seven Gables is realistic to the 
extent of being commonplace. A boy passes frequently on 
his way to school; laboring men pass to and from their work; 
women of the neighborhood hasten in to patronize the con¬ 
venient cent-shop; the butcher stops to sell a choice bit of 
meat; a seamstress across the way bends over her work, 
visible at a window; the man of all work about town is on 
friendly terms with the inhabitants of the House; and none 
of these individuals has an idea that anything out of the 
ordinary is happening within; but let the author so much 
as look at this same House and it is “like a human coun¬ 
tenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and 
sunshine, but expressive, also, of the long lapse of mortal 
life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within.” 

No evidence is given in the story to identify the House 
with any particular New England town, but certain facts 
which have been detailed in the Introduction suggest the 
building Hawthorne perhaps had in mind. The evidence that 
the scene is laid in Salem is sufficient, but the proof that any 
particular house in Salem is the House of the Seven Gables 
of the story, is very inconclusive. We may well believe that 
the author purposely refrained from identifying a particular 
house with the story to enjoy the greater latitude which a 
romance affords. 


A STUDY OF THE STORY 


339 


THE CHARACTERS 

True representatives of New England people of the time 
(1850), the characters move in a medium of romance that 
amounts almost to enchantment. They are in the hands 
of a great power which is beyond their control; they are 
the victims of ancestry. This powerful but remote ancestry 
is portrayed in the opening chapter in the grim personage 
of Colonel Pyncheon and in the equally striking character, 
Matthew Maule. We become acquainted with their family 
history and personality; then the present-day characters are 
introduced as the narrative unrolls. 

Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, a maiden lady of sixty years, 
has, up to this time, never brought reflection upon the family 
pride by engaging in any activity contributing to her ma¬ 
terial self-support. She is kept before us in something like 
a ludicrous light; yet we become aware that she is a noble 
person, with a high sense of right and capable of great love. 
Her pride of ancestry has preyed upon her until her personal 
appearance, her every activity, her very efforts to display her 
love and devotion, all approach the ridiculous. 

In contrast to Miss Hepzibah is Mr. Holgrave, the mystery 
man of the story. He is the embodiment of all that is de¬ 
sirable in freedom from the influences of the past. The 
author invests him with a personal dignity and assurance 
that command our respect, although we share to an extent 
the uneasiness felt by Hepzibah in regard to his liberal views 
about society. We have a sense of relief when it becomes 
apparent in the last chapter that conservatism has at length 
laid its hands upon him. That it should do so is one of 
the truest portrayals of life in the story. Rebellion in his 
ancestors was justified because of an inflicted wrong, but 
in him the spirit of it had degenerated to prejudice. 

Enter next, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, cousin to Miss Hep- 


340 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


zibah. Here is the old Puritan come again! Here is the 
man capable of bringing a new curse upon the family. Has 
he likewise inherited a curse? Can the stern law of justice 
without mercy in one generation develop into a criminal 
bent in a later generation? If so, in what manner of man 
could it exist? The author portrays Jaffrey Pyncheon as 
a public benefactor, a prosperous man who has risen to 
social and political prominence; his warm and kindly smile 
is known to all in the cominunity; yet we find that the 
searching analysis of sunlight belies all his benevolent quali¬ 
ties and reveals the man he is, beneath a great cloak of 
hypocrisy. In him principally the author works out his 
theme of retribution. He is not master of his fate, however 
powerful may be his personality. 

Uncle Venner, who next enters the scene, is the only 
character of the story who is not connected with the events 
of the remote past. He belongs to the community. He is a 
fitting messenger between the outside world and the Pyn¬ 
cheon family. He keeps us conscious that they live in a 
community where ordinary affairs of life are carried on. 
He keeps us in touch with reality; otherwise our contact 
with the Pyncheons would be unbelievably fantastic. 

Like a harbinger of better days to come, enters Phoebe 
Pyncheon into the House of the Seven Gables. She is the 
country cousin who takes after her mother’s family, appar¬ 
ently, since she bears in neither her appearance nor manners 
the characteristics of the Pyncheon family, She is the un¬ 
tainted one who brings sunshine into the House, but so 
great is the calamity there, so powerful the influence of 
the curse upon the family, that it subdues her spirit just as 
fresh flowers presently wither by being kept indoors. The 
author subdues her with this atmosphere until, were the 
spell not broken, we should expect her to be swallowed up 
in gloom. 


A STUDY OF THE STORY 


341 


Last of all enters Clifford Pyncheon, brother to Hepzibah 
and cousin to Jaffrey Pyncheon. As an interlude to the 
story, Chapter XIII gives the history of the tragedy of the 
sweet and lovable Alice Pyncheon, who becomes the innocent 
victim of ancestral arrogance and the curse of Matthew 
Maule. In the story proper, Clifford is the representation 
of the truth that the innocent must suffer with the guilty. 
His life should have been one of supreme happiness, de¬ 
voted to the creation of beautiful things. Instead, he has 
spent thirty years in prison, and enters the scene of the 
story all but dead. The author portrays him with a care 
that he does not give his other characters. He is the most 
pitiful victim of the crime of long ago. Phases of normal 
life, glimpses of beauty that should have fed his soul, come 
to him only faintly. The spell is all about him, and there 
is no hope for him until the long, slow tide of retribution has 
reached its height and recedes, leaving the remnants of the 
Pyncheons to secure a new anchorage and start life anew, 
reconciled to their ancient enemy and blessed by all de¬ 
parted Pyncheon spirits. 

These are the characters who, directed by Fate, move 
through the scenes of this dramatic story. Through the 
twisted skein of their careers some of the truths of life are 
interwoven by the skilful hands of the creator—Hawthorne. 


A Chronological List of Hawthorne’s Works 

1. Peter Parley’s Universal History on the Basis of 
Geography, 1837 

2. Twice-Told Tales, 1837 

3. The Gentle Boy: A Thrice-Told Tale, 1839 

4. Grandfather’s Chair: A History for Youth, 1841 

5. Famous Old People: Second Epoch of Grandfather’s 
Chair, 1841 

6. Liberty Tree: Last Words of Grandfather’s Chair, 1841 

7. Biographical Stories for Children, 1842 

8. Twice-Told Tales (enlarged edition), 1842 

9. The Celestial Railroad, 1843 

10. Journal of an African Cruiser (edited for Horatio 
Bridge), 1845 

11. Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846 

12. The Scarlet Letter: A Romance, 1850 

13. The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance, 1851 

14. A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls, 1852 

15. The Blithedale Romance, 1852 

16. The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, 1852 

17. Life of Franklin Pierce, 1852 

18. Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls: A Second Wonder- 
Book, 1853 

19. The Marble Faun, or the Romance of Monte Beni, 1860 

20. Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches, 1863 

After Hawthorne’s death, Mrs. Hawthorne derived much 
comfort and pleasure in editing for publication his American, 
342 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


343 


English, French, and Italian journals. She was working on 
the transcript of Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret at the time of her 
death. This work was later taken up and completed by Jul¬ 
ian Hawthorne. The manuscript of Septimus Felton was de¬ 
ciphered by Una, with the assistance of Robert Browning. 
The fragment of The Dolliver Romance is a reprint of the 
original as published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1863. 

21. American Note-Books, 1868 

22. English Note-Books, 1870 

23. French and Italian Note-Books, 1871 

24. Septimus Felton: A Romance, 1872 

25. The Dolliver Romance, 1876 

26. Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret, 1883 

Seven Tales of My Native Land was written in 1825, but 
was never published, and it is presumed that Hawthorne 
burned the manuscript. In 1825, he published, at his own 
expense, Fanshawe: A Tale. Only a few copies were sold, 
and Hawthorne withdrew the publication, although it is 
now included in all standard editions of Hawthorne. 

Bibliography 

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (in two volumes) 
by Julian Hawthorne (1884); Houghton Mifflin Com¬ 
pany 

2. Memories of Hawthorne by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 
(1923); Houghton Mifflin Company 

3. Yesterdays with Authors by James T. Fields (1871); 
Houghton Mifflin Company 

4. A Study of Hawthorne by G. P. Lathrop (1876); Thomas 
Nelson and Sons 

5. Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne by 
Horatio Bridge (1893); Harper Brothers 


344 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

6. Hawthorne and His Publisher by Caroline Ticknor 
(1913); Houghton Mifflin Company 

7. Hawthorne and His Circle by Julian Hawthorne (1903); 
Harper Brothers 

8. The Rebellious Puritan by Lloyd Morris (1927); Har- 
court, Brace and Company 

9. Hawthorne , in “American Men of Letters” by George 
E. Woodberry (1902); Houghton Mifflin Company 

10. A Bibliography of Hawthorne by Nina E. Browne 
(1905); Houghton Mifflin Company 

11. The Philosophy of Witchcraft by Ian Ferguson (1926); 
D. Appleton and Company 

12. History of Witchcraft and Demonology by Montague 
Summers (1926); Alfred A. Knopf 

13. The Geography of Witchcraft by Montague Summers 
(1927); Alfred A. Knopf 

14. Witchcraft in Old and New England by G. L. Kittredge 
(1929); Harvard University Press 

15. History of the Salem Witchcraft (in two volumes) by 
C. W. Upham (1867); John Wilson and Son, Cambridge 

16. Visitor’s Guide to Salem (1927); The Essex Institute, 
Salem 

17. The Bowdoin Quill (May, 1925); Students of Bowdoin 
College 

18. Bowdoin College Bulletin (September, 1925); Bowdoin 
College 

19. Personal correspondence with Professor Stanley P. 
Chase of Bowdoin College 


QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 

INTRODUCTION 

1* (&) What were the reasons for the belief in witchcraft on 
. the continent of Europe during the seventeenth century? 
(b) What social classes were included among its believers? 

2. (a) What one man in colonial days was particularly re¬ 
sponsible for the spread of the witchcraft tales in this 
country? 

(b) How did he accomplish this? 

(c) What was his principal reason for doing this? 

3. Why is the Salem witchcraft episode important in this 
country’s history? 

4. (a) On a map locate the section which was included in 
the Salem tragedy. 

(b) What landmarks still remain to recall the affair? 

5. Discuss the character of the early Salem inhabitants and 
explain their home, business, and religious life. 

6. (a) Explain the general circumstances which led up to the 
outbreak in Salem of the witchcraft craze. 

(b) Name the persons originally involved in the witch¬ 
craft discovery in Salem, and give the important, and 
specific facts which resulted in the outbreak. 

7. Connect the following names with special incidents of the 
Salem episode: Nicholas Noyes, John Putnam, Sarah Good, 
George Burroughs, Thomas Putnam, Samuel Parris, In¬ 
crease Mather, Ann Putnam, Mrs. William Phips, Joseph 
Green, and Mrs. Hale. 

8. What was the outcome of the witchcraft persecutions, and 
how long did the influence of the events last? 

9. Give two or more facts about each of the following per¬ 
sons: William Hathorne, John Winthrop, Joseph Putnam, 
Joseph Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, John Hathorne, 

345 


346 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


Nathaniel Hathorne, Elizabeth Manning (Hawthorne’s 
mother), and Daniel Hathorne. 

10. Discuss Hawthorne’s boyhood, including his birthplace, 
early education, and various youthful activities. 

11. (a) At college with what famous persons did he make 
lasting friendships? 

(b) What influence did they have over him? 

(c) What help were they to him? 

12. (a) What sort of student was Hawthorne? 

(b) Did affairs in his college life predict his future in any 
way? Explain. 

13. (a) Tell in brief the story of Hawthorne’s first employ¬ 
ment and its rewards. 

(b) Connect these facts with his courtship and marriage. 

14. Explain Elizabeth Peabodj-’s illness and its effect upon 
her character and later life w T ith Hawthorne. 

15. Sketch briefly a day at the Old Manse with the Haw¬ 
thornes, touching specifically upon the following points: 
the day’s routine, visitors of importance, facts learned about 
the author from these contacts. 

16. Discuss in detail the circumstances that led up to the 
writing and publishing of The Scarlet Letter. 

17. Where, when, and why did Hawthorne write The House 
of the Seven Gables? 

18. (a) Describe the little red farmhouse, its location, and 
its occupants. 

(b) Picture a typical day during the writing of The House 
of the Seven Gables. 

19. What famous men came to see Hawthorne at his new home? 

20. (a) Why did Hawthorne go abroad? 

(b) What did he do there? 

(c) What persons of importance did he meet? 

(d) What was his attitude toward his work? 

21. What unfortunate effect did Una’s illness have upon her 
father? 

22. Discuss Hawthorne’s attitude toward the Civil War and 
describe his accomplishments during that period. 

23. (a) Give a brief sketch of Hawthorne’s last days and 
death. 

(b) In what way was his passing characteristic of his life? 

24. (a) Tell a few important facts about each of the Haw¬ 
thorne children. 


QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 347 

(b) Show the influence of their father in their lives and 
deeds. 

25. (a) Discuss the points of interest in Salem about which 
traditions of Hawthorne or the House of the Seven Gables 
still cling r 

(b) Examine carefully the illustrations in this book and 
explain whether you believe that the artist has caught 
the spirit of the story and has brought to you any worth 
while details to clear up Hawthorne’s pen pictures. 


THE STORY 

CHAPTER I 

1. From what actual boundary dispute mentioned in the Intro¬ 
duction did Hawthorne take his idea for the squabble on 
page 3 between Pyncheon and Maule? 

2. Describe Colonel Pyncheon in detail and indicate the 
author’s reasons for drawing him in this way. 

3. Another actual happening which Hawthorne adapted to his 
story is the curse which in the narrative Maule lays upon 
Pyncheon. Look up in the Introduction the original char¬ 
acters concerned in the tradition and explain how the author 
has been able to make this scene so dramatic and important. 

4. In what way does Pyncheon’s death help to build the atmos¬ 
phere of the story and give it rapidity of motion? 

5. Trace briefly the lives of the various owners of the house 
up to this point and show how each person was influenced 
by Maule’s curse. 

6. (a) Describe in detail the original Pyncheon house. 

(b) Who constructed it? 

(c) What do you believe Pyncheon’s real purpose was in 
hiring this man for the work? 

7. (a) At the time the story really begins how many Pyncheons 
were still alive? 

(b) Name them and explain their circumstances. 

8. (a) When and how did it happen that the shop was built 
into the front of the old house? 

(b) What is the author’s purpose in concluding this chapter 
with a mention of the, ghost of the former shopkeeper? 


348 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


9. Learn how to spell, pronounce, define, and use the follow¬ 
ing words which have been taken from this chapter: acrimony, 
choleric, duodecimos, erudite, expediency, felicitates, grosser, 
immitigable, insulating, intermittent, invidious, mesmeric, 
necromancies, opaque, patrimonial, pristine, progenitor, 
punctilious, repugnance, surreptitious, testator, vicissitudes. 


CHAPTER II 

1. (a) Hawthorne’s gentle, genial humor flows quietly but 
surely through every chapter of this narrative. Find and 
explain examples of this humor in his description of charac¬ 
ters in this chapter. 

(b) Draw a word picture of Hepzibah. 

2. (a) Describe Hepzibah’s shop and its contents. 

(b) Compare it with your idea of other shops of the time. 

(c) Contrast it with a modern shop of the same type. 

3. (a) What thing which appears to us to be a trivial affair 
gives a feeling of suspense to this chapter? 

(b) Why is it such a nerve-wracking and important matter 
to Hepzibah? 

4. Hawthorne says in concluding this chapter that “Life is 
made up of marble.and mud.” What does he mean? Care¬ 
fully reread the paragraph from which this quotation is 
taken before you try to reply. 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have appeared in this chapter: anomaly, 
daguerreotype, disembodied, escritoire, fluctuating, in¬ 
decorum, ludicrous, lugubrious, matutinal, palpitations, 
phantasmagoric, recondite, reminiscences, retribution, stag¬ 
nant, susceptible, torpid, transitory, voluptuous. 


CHAPTER III 

1. (a) Why and under what circumstances does Hepzibah 
say “Let me be a lady a moment longer”? 

(b) How does it make you feel toward her? 

2. (a) What remarks which so hurt her feelings does Hep¬ 
zibah overhear during the first few hours’ business? 


QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 349 

(b) Would you, under similar circumstances, have been 
likely to make such remarks yourself? Explain. 

3. (a) Explain how and why Hepzibah’s actions in dealing 
with the little boy do not coincide with her apparent attitude, 
(b) Comment upon her dealings with the woman who 
wanted the flour. 

4. (a) About how many customers come to the shop during 
that first morning ? 

(b) What do they ask for? 

(c) How does Hepzibah feel about the business at noon¬ 
time? Why? 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have appeared in this chapter: alacrity, anath¬ 
ema, augury, celestial, commodities, complaisance, con¬ 
summated, contumaciously, effigy, emolument, ethereal, 
galvanic, hallucination, importunity, infusion, innocuous, 
obeisance, periwigged, pertinacious, potent, recluse, sordid, 
subtile, tacit, talisman, temporal, vindicate, virulence. 


CHAPTER IV 

1. (a) Describe and tell all you can about Jaffrey Pyncheon. 
(b) Why is Hepzibah so nervous when she sees him? 

2. (a) What do you think of Uncle Venner? 

(b) Draw a word picture of him. 

(c) Explain how he helps Hepzibah when she is most dis¬ 
couraged. 

3. (a) What sort of business woman would you consider Hep¬ 
zibah? Explain. 

(b) What are the reasons for her being as she is? 

4. (a) Discuss the coming of Phoebe to the old house. 

(b) Who is she, and what are Hepzibah’s feelings upon 
seeing her? 

(c) How does her arrival affect your attitude toward the 
story? 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have appeared in this chapter: analogous, 
apothegm, appertaining, benevolence, demeanor, festal, 
harlequin, impregnated, influx, omnivorous, patriarch, phan¬ 
tasms, tangible, tithe, transmuting. 


350 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


CHAPTER V 

1. Why does Hepzibah discourage Phoebe’s staying at the 
old house? 

2. (a) What new information does Hepzibah give us about 
Judge Pyncheon? 

(b) Does it affect Phoebe? Ekplain. 

3. (a) Who is Clifford Pyncheon? 

(b) How does Hepzibah feel toward him? 

4. (a) What success does Phoebe have as a storekeeper for 
her cousin Hepzibah? 

(b) Does the old shop sound more interesting with Phoebe 
in charge? Explain. 

5. (a) What part does it appear that Holgrave may now take 
in the story? 

(b) How does Hepzibah feel about him? 

6. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have appeared in this chapter: affability, 
compliant, harpsichord, incompatible, inscrutable, motive, 
nectareous, obstreperous, philanthropists, piquant, pitted, 
spontaneous, temperament, thrummed. 


CHAPTER VI 

1. (a) Describe the yard as Phoebe sees it. 

(b) Would you be as happy as Phoebe under such circum¬ 
stances? Why? 

2. From a better acquaintance with Holgrave, would you say 
with Hepzibah that “I have seriously made it a question 
whether I ought not to send him away”? Explain your 
answer. 

3. From your study of Chapter I and your reading of this 
present chapter, does there appear to be any good reason 
for the evil reputation of Maule’s well? Discuss. 

4. How and why is Hepzibah changing in her attitude toward 
Phoebe? 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have appeared in this chapter: amputation, appari¬ 
tion, authenticity, biped, cogitations, inalienable, lineage, 
poignant, propensities, respiration, tutelary, vagrant. 


QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 


351 


CHAPTER VII 

1. Discuss the various adventures in cooking and eating that go 
on in the old house under Phoebe’s management. 

2. (a) Describe the arrival ol Clifford Pyncheon. 

(b) What sort of person does he at first appear to be? 

(c) Do you like him? Explain. 

3. (a) How does Hepzibah take Clifford’s condemnation of the 
old house? 

(b) In what way does she explain the reopening of the shop? 

4. (a) Does it appear that Clifford is going to be a helpful 
or a disturbing influence in the life of the household? 

(b) Discuss this question both from Hepzibah’s point of 
view and Phoebe’s. 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have been taken from this chapter: asperity, 
auditory, conjugal, contiguity, culinary, derisory, ebullition, 
inchoate, indefeasibly, irretrievable, obtuse, olfactory, pet¬ 
tishness, propitiatory, Sybarite, translucent. 

CHAPTER VIII 

1. (a) Describe Judge Pyncheon’s arrival into the shop and 
explain his attitude toward Phoebe. 

(b) What does Phoebe think of him? 

2. (a) Give a character sketch of Judge Pyncheon. 

(b) Do you find in him echoes of the earlier Pyncheon? 

(c) What part do you think he is likefy to play in the story? 

3. (a) What additional information does this chapter give us 
about Phoebe’s earlier life? 

(b) Sketch briefly the dramatic scene between Judge Pyn¬ 
cheon and Hepzibah. 

(c) Why does she not want Pyncheon to see Clifford? 

4. After the scene, how much does Phoebe’s attitude toward the 
Judge appear to be swayed by Hepzibah’s opinion of him? 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have been taken from this chapter: acerbity, be¬ 
nignity, canonized, choristers, dint, disparagement, diurnal, 
effulgence, endowment, equilibrio, eschewing, firmament, 
grisly, inauspicious, ingurgitation, integrity, intuitions, physi¬ 
ognomy, superadded, unctuous. 


352 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


CHAPTER IX 

1. What means does Hepzibah find of keeping Clifford enter¬ 
tained during his stay? 

2. (a) What are Clifford’s feelings toward Hepzibah? 

(b) Why does he feel this way? . 

3. (a) How does Clifford show the effects of Phoebe’s com¬ 
panionship? 

(b) Pick a key sentence that explains his attitude toward 
her. 

4. Is life in the old house good or bad for Phoebe? Defend 
your answer. 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have been taken from this chapter: chaste, 
facile, interfused, interposition, morbidness, multiplicity, 
thwarted, uncouthness. 

CHAPTER X 

1. What does the garden mean to Phoebe, to Clifford, to Hep¬ 
zibah? 

2. Show examples of Hawthorne’s humor throughout this 
chapter. 

3. Write a brief composition describing a typical day in the 
lives of Hepzibah, Phoebe, Clifford, Uncle Venner, and 
Holgrave. 

4. (a) How does Holgrave get along with Clifford? 

(b) What does he do to please or displease the old man? 

5. (a) What is really wrong with Clifford, and how many 
dwellers in the old house know it? 

(b) Does this knowledge make a great difference in their 
treatment of him? Explain. 

6. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have been taken from this chapter: addle, brackish, 
gallinaceous, Hymettus, indefatigable, lambent, probationary, 
propensity, sagacious, touchstone, wizened. 

CHAPTER XI 

1. (a) What sort of monotonous routine does Clifford soon begin 
to follow? 


QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 


353 


(b) What things interest him? 

(c) What things does he complain about? 

2. Is Hawthorne trying to point a moral in his description of 
the Italian organ grinder? Explain your answer. 

3. (a) Describe Clifford’s near accident. 

(b) What is responsible for it? 

(c) What is the result of the shock? 

4. Discuss the church-going incident, and explain the reason for 
both persons 7 sudden fright. 

5. (a) Contrast the characters of Judge Pyncheon and Clifford 
in the final scene in this chapter. 

(b) What does it prove about each? 

6. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have been taken from this chapter: contingen¬ 
cies, dissonance, emaciated, fastidious, gabardine, haggard, 
impalpable, inveterate, lucre, pantomimic, perambulatory, 
piquing, prolixity, prolongation, tartans, titillate, toper, 
visionary. 


CHAPTER XII 

1. What does the author realty mean by his remark, “Hep- 
zibah . . . had grown to be a kind of lunatic”? 

2. (a) How is Phoebe’s life being changed by her stay in the 
old house? 

(b) With what persons can she talk with any real pleasure? 

(c) What difficulties does she face in this relationship? 

3. (a) Sketch briefly Holgrave’s life according to his own ac¬ 
count of it. 

(b) What is Phoebe’s attitude toward him? 

(c) What does the author appear to think of him? 

(d) Have you yourself any new impressions regarding him? 

4. (a) What is the subject of Holgrave’s discussion with 
Phoebe toward the end of the chapter? 

(b) Does Phoebe uphold her side logically? 

(c) What are her defenses? 

5. (a) At the very conclusion of this chapter what new side of 
Holgrave’s activities do we learn? 

(b) Is he fast becoming a more interesting character or a 
duller one? 

6. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have appeared in this chapter: assimilating, climes, 


354 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


desultory, effervescence, exemplifying, harbingers, magnani¬ 
mous, metaphysical, nutriment, pedigree, philosophical, pre¬ 
figure, premature, profligate, provocative, subterranean, 
tenacity, vehemence. 

CHAPTER XIII 

1. The opening of this chapter may at first seem confusing 
because it gives a flash-back into the lives of some of the 
earlier characters. Reread Chapter I and follow into this 
present chapter the relationships of these later Pyncheons 
and Maules. Remember that this chapter represents the 
story Holgrave is telling to Phoebe. 

2. (a) Note the negro servant’s excitement as Maule mentions 
witchcraft. What is Hawthorne’s purpose in including this 
bit of conversation? 

(b) What is the reason for Gervayse Pyncheon’s calling 
young Matthew Maule to see him? 

3. (a) Note the witchcraft references in this chapter which 
have already been explained in the Introduction. 

(b) Observe carefully the way that Hawthorne has inter¬ 
woven fact with fiction so ingeniously that the story rings 
true. 

4. (a) What is Maule’s attitude toward Pyncheon? 

(b) What old, traditional argument arises? 

(c) How does Pyncheon deal with it? 

(d) Is he right? Discuss. 

5. (a) Explain Maule’s final proposition. 

(b) How does Pyncheon receive it? 

(c) What is the result? 

6. (a) Describe the scene with Alice, her father, and Maule. 

(b) Discuss the suggestion of the witchcraft element. 
What would we call such a thing today? 

(c) What action does Maule take? 

(d) What finally happens to Alice? 

(e) Discuss Maule’s reaction. 

7. (a) How does the gurgling in Pyncheon’s throat recall the 
old curse? 

(b) Is the constant repetition of this action a worth while 
element in the story? 

&. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have been taken from this chapter: adherents, artisan, 


355 


QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 

bandy, disburthening, equanimity, exotics, gossamer, im¬ 
penetrable, inclement, irrevocably, laudable, malign, pro¬ 
mulgated, reprobate, rigadoon, spawn, tenet, tunic, un¬ 
sullied. 


CHAPTER XIV 

1. Explain what the author means by saying that Holgrave 
“forbade himself to . . . have rendered his spell over 
Phoebe indissoluble.” 

2. What does Holgrave mean when he says “You have lost 
nothing, Phoebe, worth keeping, nor which it is possible to 
keep.” Explain the purpose of the scene which precedes 
this remark. 

3. (a) Why is Phoebe leaving? 

(b) What does Holgrave say about her departure? 

4. How do the inhabitants of the old house feel about Phoebe’s 
leaving? 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have appeared in this chapter: abortive, arbiter, 
auditress, demagogue, deprecated, embellished, exemplified, 
imbued, incipient, indissoluble, manifestation, mystic, 
psychological, renovators. 


CHAPTER XV 

1. (a) What difficulties beset Hepzibah after Phoebe’s depar¬ 
ture? 

(b) How does she attempt to meet them? 

(c) What weather attends this trouble? 

(d) Is this part of the author’s scheme of amosphere build¬ 
ing? Explain. 

2. (a) Detail the scene between Hepzibah and Judge Pyncheon. 

(b) What does Pyncheon want? 

(c) Why does Hepzibah refuse it? 

3. What new insight into Judge Pyncheon’s character do 
we get from the author’s discussion which acts as an interlude 
in the argument? 

4. Explain the fresh light thrown on Clifford’s past by Judge 
Pyncheon’s remarks near the close of the chapter. 


356 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


5. What demand does Pyncheon make finally and how does 
Hepzibah answer it? 

6. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have been taken from this chapter: cornice, inutility, 
paramount, prelusive, sedulously, unimpeachable. 

CHAPTER XVI 

1. (a) What worries pass through Hepzibah’s mind as she goes 
upstairs to call Clifford? 

(b) Explain exactly what the author means in the sentence 
“Fate stared her in the face.” 

(c) Why is this moment of such importance to her? 

2. Where is Clifford when Hepzibah goes to call him? 

3. (a) What happened to Judge Pyncheon during the interval? 
(b) Do jmu hear echoes of the ancient tragedy in this new 
one? Explain. 

4. Why do you think this dreadful thing happened? 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have been taken from this chapter: chaise, col¬ 
loquy, defunct, grimalkin, obliterated. 

CHAPTER XVII 

1. (a) What do Hepzibah and her brother do immediately after 
leaving the house? 

(b) Describe Hepzibah’s state of mind and Clifford’s actions. 

2. (a) What strange change seems to have come over Clifford? 
(b) What subject does he discuss with so much enthusiasm 
that he frightens his listener? 

3. (a) At what place do the two finally arrive? 

(b) What happens to Clifford? 

4. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have been taken from this chapter: abstruse, 
blaspheming, clew, cumbrous, enfranchised, hypothesis, in¬ 
clement, pates, phlegmatically, pollute, quidnuncs, solstice, 
testily, tinctured, transitory, unmalleable. 

CHAPTER XVIII 

1. (a) How does Hawthorne’s long and strange description of 
the Judge sitting in his chair affect you? 


QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 357 

(b) Discuss the purpose of the author’s keeping you in this 
suspense. 

2. What additional information concerning the Judge’s daily 
life have you learned from this description? 

3. (a) Rerelad Chapter I and compare the author’s picture of 
Colonel Pyncheon with his drawing of the present Judge. 

(b) Compare or contrast the circumstances. 

4. (a) Describe the coming of evening in the quiet room and 
the various incidents which follow the moonrise. 

(b) What qualities do you most like or dislike in this chap¬ 
ter? 

5. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have been taken from this chapter: chronometer, 
demesne, disbursements, gubernatorial, laggard, lethargy, 
malignant, undeviatingly, vociferous. 

CHAPTER XIX 

1. (a) The opening pages of this chapter explain certain of 
Uncle Venner’s activities. What are they? 

(b) What is the purpose of his talk with Holgrave? 

2. Name the various persons who arrive at the shop, find no 
one at home, and go away with many speculations. 

3. Who arrives in the midst of the trouble? 

4. (a) What curious thing has happened to Maule’s well? 

(b) What does it mean? 

5. (a) Comment upon the concluding sentence in this chapter, 
(b) Is it well chosen and what does it promise? 

6. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have been taken from this chapter: competence, com- 

■ plement, eleemosynary, epitome, erratic, inexorable, ob¬ 
sequiously, prescriptive, rampant. 

CHAPTER XX 

1. (a) What reasons does Holgrave offer for not announcing 
Judge Pyncheon’s death immediately? 

(b) How does Phoebe act under these trying circumstances? 

2. (a) Comment upon Holgrave’s speaking at this time to 
Phoebe of his love for her. 

(b) Is this natural, do you think? 


358 THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES 


(c) What do you think of Phoebe’s answer? 

(d) Did you foresee this situation? 

3. What important characters reappear at the conclusion of. 
this chapter? 

4. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following 
words which have been taken from this chapter: intrusive, 
oscillating, transcended. 


CHAPTER XXI 

1. (a) What incidents preceding Jaffrey’s death suggest a 
possibility that he has been murdered? 

(b) Toward whom is the guilt pointed? Why? What 
comes of it? 

(c) What other theories are offered? 

2. (a) What interesting suggestion is made by Holgrave? 

(b) What reasons do you yourself offer for Pyncheon’s 
death? 

3. Does any humor crop out in this concluding chapter? De¬ 
fend your answer. 

4. (a) What curious and interesting relic does Holgrave un¬ 
earth? 

(b) What does it mean to the story? 

(c) What amazing confession does Holgrave make? 

(d) Does it sound logical? 

(e) Does it make the plot any clearer to you? Explain. 

5. (a) Explain the outcome of the story. 

(b) Is it satisfying to you? 

(c) Would you change any of its elements? Explain your 
answer. 

(d) Did you guess the key to the riddle before you arrived 
at the end of the story? Explain. 

6. (a) What do you think of the story? 

(b) Would you read another by this author? Why? 

(c) What did you enjoy most about the narrative? 

(d) Are there any points which still need clearing up? 

7. Learn to spell, pronounce, define, and use the following words 
which have been taken from this chapter: apathy, barouche, 
deductive, frailties, idiosyncrasy, kaleidoscopic, obviated, 
posthumous, propensities, venial. 





























































































































































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